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ISrOTICE 



This fifth edition is presented simultaneously to many 
public Officers, Editors, and Citizens throughout the United 
States, in the hope that those who receive it will render their 
aid in promoting its circulation and influence. It is believed 
by those patriotic friends who have provided liberally for the 
distribution of this and previous editions, that the work be- 
longs neither to Geographical Section nor Political party, 
but that it unfolds principles and methods worthy of deep 
and general consideration. The warm welcome it has re- 
ceived from some of the largest slaveholders, as well as from 
many eminent citizens and statesmen both North and South, 
justifies this belief 

The work will be forwarded by either of the Publishers 
on receiving 38 cents in postage stamps. 



SLAVERY 



THE REMEDY; 



OB, 



PRINCIPLES AND SUGGESTIONS 



REMEDIAL CODE. 

BY 

SAMUEL "NOTT. 



" Bonds make free, be they but righteous bonds. Freedom enslaves, if it be 
I unrighteous freedom." — Page 28. 



FIFTH EDITION; 

•WITH 

A REVIEW OF THE DECISION OF THE SUPREME COURT IN THE 
CASE OF DRED SCOTT. 



NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 

BOSTON: CROCKER AND BREWSTER. 
185 7. 






ADVEKTISEMEST TO THE FOURTH EDITION. 

At the close of the year 1856, — a year of remarkable illustration of the 
principles of this work — at tliis breathing time from the strife of sections, so 
suitable for sober and benevolent thought, I have summed up the whole 
matter in three additional pages ; closed with a Dedicatiox to the Peoplb 
OF THE United States, — a brief and earnest Appeal to the whole Union 
affixed, not prefixed, because it proceeds on the principles which the work 
illustrates, and in the hope that when the reader has reached it, he will be 
prepared to -welcome it. 

The author has received with great satisfaction and thankfulness the 
spontaneous approbation of many of the wisest and the best, both North and 
South, — such that he is encoiu-aged to believe his work not unfitted for 
the high purposes at which it aims, — to engage the South in their proper 
work in behalf of the African race, and to unite the North in taking the 
only position in which they can render effectual as well as acceptable aid. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the Tear 1855, by 

CROCKER AND BREWSTER, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts 



INTRODUCTION 



We meet Slavery as a fact, not as a proposal. We have to 
do with slaveholding, not with slave-making. We seek not what 
should be done if there were no slaves, but what is right and best 
now that there are more than three millions. We seek the right 
method, and the best method in existing circumstances. 

Admitting the evil of Slavery, and the imperious demand for 
a Remedial Code, but denying slaveholding as a crime per se, 
and immediate abolition as the remedy ; — asserting that the Afri- 
can race is fixed, and must be provided for chiefly on our soil, and 
yet approving heartily colonization in Africa ; — claiming that the 
climate and productions of the South, and the original and actual 
condition of the enslaved race, forbid the methods of the North and 
the Anglo-Saxon race ; — turning the question from mere abolition 
and mere slavery, to the xcell-heing of a people providentially 
on our hands ; — and, lastly, fixing the responsibility upon each 
slaveholding State, separately, and denying it to the United States, 
— a remedy is sought suited to the pecidiar case, — a Remedial 
Code, at least an experiment of relief and benefit, which wisely 
and successfully made by any single State, might lead the whole 
sisterhood in her train. 

A Christian State, philanthrojyic, patriarchal, is hound to abolish 
just so much of Slavery as is injurious, and no more ; to retain 



mmuA m is hmefieki, mad mm iess. l%e CftmCMW jpoAri- 
hT CSkntSmm. jpkSlm^ngiist meed wMtieml wmaimtee, tf tkeg 
wis jotf wna^ im, Sibe tuKqsk oObb^ «• jwiwrtg <ftc mvMhm ^ ^ 

Tbt hatSa^ panft i» Iw le^ m^iew is m Beaeffid Gode,is 

wtieh aere iDolt of its ^seaee: ia ottber ^iravfe, tto secnre tbe two 
oaomiHpunt^ die bn^ "IkU to kinr,'" and tti» being' bdd to 

naiiiaaoai Ikaluar, wiAtmi, Ae ewib nrlueh xtow aMarb to bodi mas- 

IteES ani shn^»,aBi to ttke wboDe mmmii iilj iliii i n ilTlj in ronotidj 

(oauDdcted. A Bffimfiinil Code naeit tarn at die jEiDovii^ p«r- 



1. 1^ fs^sriie £»■ Ae ^tcs, as a vaes, soBetibraig iKtter 



tlB falBor; 80 Aaf: a ctmsidEiartie slxre n^t 

<sf fiiniiiiMj io fi uiiluM yniat seH by its pnoe ; 
ass of ebracs 1kv« aPB iilerKit ia d»e cosdtieBed 



-.iT tdhe BHBlBts ?iB»rthiiwg lieitier dtaa "^avoy 

_-aIbMe Wwr ia i^tam fcr Ae «iafiD^" and 

tat ' : IkjUIgt seroee wiili less dSffiriulKjes and 

tl..- \. r rt m Stv mS^kA, pr efer fibe SenedEal 



" . - -_ jks aiod dkffiee laeeatiHiig fi^ee 

'r^fiDl eoandbooai of ibar cbist; sai- 

■•..^oHse, — to salisfT 
■. - 1 -y. DC* TDerdj bj 

'..-T • - — -i-en eril extremes. 



Tip ' ffCTlg g ^ ictfsuic' ;*j*ntt»mi^ if iie fiffiKUJt»Kl. Jl iffrv.^n^ 

d>tS5 :iHr. ^TRsaie' il^nautiKs oi siIms* latus* ialrsnuniv^ ' 

It' *3iiEVtr7 ae n^eaantta. ■'as j .»,'' ram x ta wixuuu liifiiuutua 
soii ^iWRS, wciGiuir :mbs ami aosasiHs. "«ii:mci nnus^ ihjsiiiu. x it ix» 

IE' ?^nr tt»»^ 3tfi aiuoiifiutaL sm a 3e 'wntuun :3nn}zi(CuasDit -nffi?rai — 

ysah. ratsa ji titer aisv^ :rj2ffliraiB, ir iff "im 3V0rii 'rata "iie sok 
if TTwa sucM^ stfitL xtnui ji Jk a iiiutn. 

3sn: a ^. liiui i l. ■ ra wi nn rrtRni- auCL 3. :cette '^^t" JS l&IcSniDtdC- SUL 

^t'lMiii^tiiMnrwi sLurT ;ji a ^"^Trrtgiim aiuniTr^' ami HT^ a riurtfiMi 
-3Kane. Hi a. ""^nrMpiyn :caixiir^ ^m a Unvaxsai -xeofUi. ^ve ouas 
JHT affpnwa- T"ift senas -xr' rs^iaifflhmm lut :Baietv:otair. jK^rmim. 
ite TsiwiTg .-111 mniiiR ;firgt!ii:!^L. zmus ;i« JuxuueeaL jn -mne' n -iiti 
oiunMim aufsuui. ami sucesBStii. -ssEecnufli. 3mc :twpft rMunuoseL 
:faesi. ail sScsuicta as ^arxrzmsL iini d' :be ulttinnt 3tt n-gnr am 
'Vtm& ^ . ^ . IE a 3csiUE&dia Il;<ffit 3r :tiB :Ttaii 3aB^tsnet ■» :±iit 
^BOea. 30fc-;. f rhrrffiitm se«L ^dL i' :tiB .-icret cr' mr Tmgnmcr 

^a£L aaoB iFiwtwmTiaw .IT ioTDn. - 3vntnTrg i annieffiiufr ^nti 
Qaii. 3at&m]^ :» .m i iitih t a uit t« arm. ttcih ossbsvsii. ]Sl4 aateiinr 
i^ZiCun ±m ^ iM i-w M i i tt' I}nri5;ianTr ^ n .its tningnr. amnestuit. 
"Tsass- ami x^. .iiitamn -^tiia 5rii rPOTmrs. am •* accoim ann 

■ auiltili i mna ^nta -Trmnntg ^t."' IE xfase ^WOS jnsfe" sam -«eeil ^v>«"' 

MCF 2ans aod :jiais :innsB^ioB. ana "we 3nr :±hsi la :tiR "^r^ pKmr 

tissm rtraics iiar le ain jhs xumgn in?'' ■wsk."' "Vob aunl iurs "Xi 
aBtr tutt xie Hurisiaa ^auriarcut ac ;tie aHantu am :±ifi SnrTtgMi 



b INTRODUCTION. 

Philanthropists of the North, will not unite in seeking the aid of 
Heaven, and in Heaven's strength prevail, — fixing their eye, 
amidst the darkness and the storm, upon the only and sufficient 
encouragement; — The things which aee impossible with 

MEN AEE possible WITH GOD. 

Waeeham, Mass., Dec. 1855. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

ADMISSIONS, DENIALS, DISTINCTIONS. 

Page 
Slavery an Evil. — Mutual Bondage. — Slave-holding not a Crime. — 
Slave-holding and Slave-making distinguished. — Crime defined, 
■whether with Bond or Free. — Principle of dealing with stolen Goods 
or stolen Men. — Misnomers. — Fallacies. — Distinctions in order to 
aHemedy 11 

CHAPTER II. 

THE PROBLEM OF AFRICA IN AMERICA. 

Impossibility of Removal, requiring a Remedy, — Results of Colonisa- 
tion for one third of a Century. — Comparison of emigration from the 
British Isles. — The proper work of the Colonization Society. — Room 
demanded for Africa in America 16 

CHAPTER III. 

CLIMATE AND PRODUCTIONS OF THE SOUTH. — ORIGINAL 
AND ACTUAL CONDITION OF THE ENSLAVED RACE. 

Methods of the North and the Anglo-Saxon Race forbidden by Climate 
and Productions. — Mr. "Webster's Speech at Rochester. — Forbidden 
by Barbarism at Emigration, and actual state. — Probable Results if 
African Emigration had been free. — The sense of the North shown 
in the " Black Codes." — Comparison of Rome and Carthage 19 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE QUESTION TURNED TO WELL-BEING. 

Not Pro-Slavery nor Anti-Slavery, but Well-being. — Good Bonds re- 
tained, bad Bonds removed. — Competition of European Labor. — 
Things not Words. — Wrong of enslaving changes not the Question. 
The Repentant Pirate. — The Common Doom and its Purpose. — 
Bonds make Free. — Presumptuous Franchises 23 



O CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER V. 

AMERICAN EXPERIMENTS WITH BARBARISM. 

Page. 
Compaxison of the Africo-American -with the aboriginal African. — The 
race improved by Slaverj-, evils notwithstanding. — Dr. Channing's 
testimony. — Rev. Mr. Paj-ne's. — Rev. Mr. Miller's. — Liberia a wit- 
ness. — Comparison of the Africo-American with the aboriginal Amer- 
ican. — Increase and Improvement contrasted with Deterioration and 
Extermination. — False Explanation. — Conclusion firom American 
Experiments with Barbarism 29 

CHAPTER VI. 

EUROPEAN EXPERIMENTS WITH SERFDOM. 

Assumptions of the Nineteenth Century. — Its Wisdom from Centuries 
preceding. — European Experiments suggesting Prevention. — Misery 
of the Masses. — Paradox of Freedom. — Presumptuous Franchises. — 
Law of mutual Interdependence from Job and the Prophets. — Euro- 
pean Experiments. — France before and since 1789. — Ireland. — Sir 
Robert Peel's statement of the Ulster Experiment. — England. — 
Blackstone on imperfect application of Remedy. — Conclusion there- 
from. 39 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE RESPONSIBILITY. 

Sense of Responsibility assumed. — Responsibility to God. — No Athe- 
istical Wisdom for social Weil-Being. — Limits. — Mad Astronomers 
and Philanthropists, — Christian Equalization by InequaUty. — Indi- 
vidual Responsibility. — Responsibility of the State to the great Over- 
ruler. — Outside Responsibilities 43 



CHAPTER VIII. 

IRRESPONSIBILITY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Irresponsibility for the Constitution. — Not Man's Device, in 1787, but 
God's Ordinance, progressing for a thousand Years. — Wittenagemot. 

— Magna Charta. — Declaration of Rights. — Virginia. — Plymouth. 

— Royal Charters and State Claims. — Many New Englands. — 
Growing Unity. — Natural and artificial Bonds 



CONTENTS. 9 

CHAPTER IX. 

UNION BY SEPARATION. 

Page. 
United because separate. — Early Advantages of France, Holland, and 
Spain. — How overcome. — Examples at Louisburg and Fort du 
Quesne. — The French "War and Conquest of Canada. — Error of 1781 
acknowledged by cotemporaneous Symbols. — Impossibilities since. — 
Impossibilities now, — Dissolution of the Union impossible. — Sepa- 
ration only by "War ; Peace only by Union 55 

CHAPTER X. 

THE LAW OF EQUAL FORCES. 

Equilibrium of North and South. — Necessary Impotence and Irrespon- 
sibility. — Results of Equilibrium hitherto and hereafter. — Equal 
Impotence of North and South, — Union not hindered or forbidden 
thereby, — False Views of Domination and Subserviency, — Scope for 
Northern Philanthropy, — Illustration from the Cotton Gin 62 

CHAPTER XI, 

ADVANTAGES OF STATE SUPREMACY. 

Acknowledged Impotence, the strongest Appeal of the North to the 
South. — Slaveholding States alone competent. — Advantage of single 
Responsibility, beginning on a small scale and extending by success- 
ful Experiment. — Examples in Mechanical Improvements. — Steam 
Navigation. — Erie Canal and the Empire State. — Political Progress. 

— Revolution of 1GS8.— Birth of the Union, 1690. — Capture of 
Louisburg. — Washington and Virginia. — Patrick Henry. — Con- 
stitutional Convention. — Individual Influence, — Jay, Hamilton, 
and Madison, — Moral like physical Forces, — Impotence the Reser- 
voir of Safety and of Power 67 

CHAPTER XII, 

THE COMMON TERRITORIES AND FREE SOIL. 

Political Right affirmed. — Partnership and Dividends. — Surplus Rev- 
enue, — Surplus Lands, — Letter of the Constitution, — Impotence 
of the North in the Strife of Equal Forces. — Impotence of the South 
as well as the North, — Fugitive Slave Law, — The Better '« Cordon," 

— The true Desideratum. — Northern Views. — Territorial Commis- 



to CONTEXTS. 

Page. 
Eicn and Experiment. — " The Higher Law," and iis true Applica- 
tion Comparison of the «' Law of Nations " and the Law of Ocean 

and Shore. 7o 

CHAPTER XIII. 
SrGGESTIOXS rOR A EEMEDIAL CODE. 

Szcnox I. — Mutttai Bonds of Labor and Capiial. — Essential quality 
of Slavery to be maintained. — Mutual Dependence requiring Mutual 
Bonds. — Labor to be secured to the Slave and to the Master. — Modes 
of securing voluntary Labor. — Modes of enforcement 87 

Sectiox 2. — Marriage and the Domesiie Emotions. — Laws of Marriage 
and Divorce, and related Vices, the same for Bond as Free. — Slavery 
in aid. — Eeference to Jamaica. — Advantages to Masters. — Provi- 
sion far DiSculties. — Southern Propositions and Views. 92 

Sectiox 3. — SaJet cutd Bnigratioiu — Laconveniences to Sellers. — Ho-w 
provided for. — To Buyers. — Compensations. — Necessary Emigra- 
tioaa- 94 

Sectiox 4. — Slava <o be eapabie of holdinff Property. — Master's Claim 
undisturbed. — Present M^hods of acquiring, holding and trans- 
mitting, legalized. — New Methods of earning and investing 9S 

Sectiox 5. — Edueaiion and Religious Worship. — Claims of the Slave. 

— Xo just Education but Eeligious. — Religious, how given. — With 
and without public Provision- — Religious Worship 102 

Sectiox 6. — Protection of the Lavs. Judicial Provisions and M^hods. — 
General Laws to be applicable to Bond as well as free. — Special Ex- 
ceptior^. — Special Laws and Repeals. — Slave Officers and Courts. 

— ilr. Steele. — Mr. McDonough 104 

Sscnox 7. — Franchises and Freedom. — Franchises of Slaves as Slaves. 

— Personal Freedom. — How obtained, and its Franchises. — How 
limited. — Resorts. 103 

Sectiox 8, — Methods for the Free. — Registration. — Liberty of Settle- 
ment and Employment. — Aids to Property. — Accustomed Em- 
ployments commended. — Way to Rise. — Opportunities. — Colored 

Communities Liberia 110 

COXCLUSIOX. 115 

Postscetpt.— The Contest for « Speaker " iHustratirg Chapter X 117 



SLAVERY A.\D THE REMEDY 



CHAPTER I. 







ci tbe r»<v •Oct c-rpresi^i "rrrtlrr- %z ±r S:c--i ' ire ■■rriie i= 

lesj<d from ±-e ss:::^ e-r-lj --z il^ ■>:.-ii^r :: iliir s^va=w X*. 
d^obs sja-rerT is m t^Z. in j-tr : :isi7 ■£-r-~.'.i-- -"~g & rsriccx si cooe 

iis iasiat:. if vca rar™ I: tlr iliT-e^ ^ra:i r-e ri-sziirr-r^rr-i —ro la 
iiriaasriixis aad ihri-rLr^ -•e:i>^inIr7. iri -Lie r~.^.^trs irto —-i^ziscrjjsas 



12 

Tou cannot help it by any right method ; neither are you guilty for 
being a slaveholder when you cannot help that by any right method. 
The entering voluntarily into slavery is a crime ; the bringing men 
into slavery is a crime. So is entering voluntarily into poverty, or 
bringing others into poverty, a crime ; but it is not, therefore, a 
crime to be poor, or to have poor neighbors. So it is with sickness 
and broken bones. It is a crime to make yourself or another man 
sick, to break your own or another man's bones ; but not to be sick, 
or have broken bones, or to be surrounded by the diseased and 
maimed until by all right methods you can make them whole and 
sound. It is not more a crime to be a slave until you can become 
rightly and advantageously free, or to hold other men in slavery 
until you can rightly and advantageously set them free from what- 
ever galling bonds- 
Expanding this common sense only on one side ; slave-holding, 
until slave-freeing can be accomplished rightly and advantageously, 
is not, cannot be a crime ; is not, cannot be a sin. It is wrong to 
enslave ; but slaves being found upon our hands, we are responsible, 
not for the enslaving, which occurred without our knowledge, and 
before our existence, but for remedying the evil as soon as we can. 
To apply this to the opprobrfous comparison of holding stolen 
goods : To steal is a crime ; to hold stolen goods from the owners 
for yourself is a crime. The partaker is as bad as the thief. But 
it is not a crime, but a virtue, to hold stolen goods in careful trust, 
in safe keeping, for the owner, to avail the utmost for his ben- 
efit. * * * ^ stolen looking glass ! a stolen watch ! What ! 
as soon as you know it, as quick as thought and muscle can act, are 
you to da^h them on the pavement from the third loft, and glory 
in the speed with which you clear yourself of the guilt of holding 
stolen goods ? Far better hold them a day, a week, a year, ten 
years, if need be, in order to restore them most advantageously to 
the rightful owner. * * * 

A stolen man ! found on your hands ! in your house ! What shall 
you do ? The goods are delicate, and may be injured or destroyed 
by over haste. Beware lest you kill or maim him in your hurry. 
File gently ; do not hew, lest in loosing his chains you mutilate or 
destroy. Do not toss him headlong from the uppermost window at 
the hazard of every bone in his body. Take time rather to lead 
him dehberately down stairs, through safe passages, that at least he 



13 

may have a fair escape with life and limb as he goes fix)m voar 
b^Ddi, or TOO may incur a graver guilt than that of holding a 
stolen man. 

Of coarse I denv the duty of immediate emancipanon on the part 
Df those to whom the question belongs ; L e-, without such provis- 
ions and arrangements as require time — as must lit themselves 
gradually to the people concerned. ~ Institutions are not made, but 
grow."' If I could persuade the legiskuures of the slaveholding 
States to abolish slavery January 1. l.S-56. I would rot do it- J£ I 
were autocrat, I would not decree it. I believe there is a more 
excellent way than immediate and unconditional emancipation- 
•So^ cito. si sat bene. So<m enough, if well enough : too soon, if not 
weU done. 

In truth, immediate emancipation is impossiUe : however claimed 
m theory, it cannot be pra<nicaily adopted. Every proposal and 
attempt carries in itself the principle oi a nece^ary and righteous 
delay. Be it longer or shorter, there is an interval in which the 
master may and must remain a master — in which the slave may 
and must remain a slave. There is no ultra-abolitionist so nnerly 
lost to all common sense as to deny that the individual master may 
delay, in order to such legal arrangements as shall secure and make 
advantageous the boon he confers ; or that the State may take time 
to give form and scope to the enactments by which it imdertakes to 
emancipate. There is an interval — be it longer or shorter, whether 
tiU to-morrow noon. January 1. or some more distant period — need- 
ful for a goo«i and permanent result, as Christian discretion may 
decide. The crime is, the disot>eying the rules tor the interval, and 
deferring or neglecting the good and permanent result. 

I do not forget the popular phrases assumed as establishii]^ crim- 
inality, such as - the holding human beings as property: " - retain- 
ing the earnings of the slave ; " but to me they seem to make the 
arguments in which they stand the merest fallacies — arguments 
from misnomers, as k" they were true names ; from words used in a 
peculiar, as if they had been used in the ordinary sense. ~ To 
insure life "' b the most guilty presumption if the term t<e employed 
in its ordinary and not in its technical sense. ~ To sell the time " 
of a minor is arrogance and oppression if you take the words in 
any but the peculiar meaning which custom has settled, and then it 



14 

maj be as kind to him and his friends as it is just in you. " To 
hold human beings as property" is a crime when the terms arp 
understood in the ordinary sense instead of that which custom has 
settled ; and then it may be as right as it is unavoidable. The 
charge is a mere criminatio verhorum without regard to the essen- 
tial qualities of the act condemned, which, in the circumstances and 
for the time, may be a duty. Undoubtedly it is a sin to " hold men 
as property " without regard to the nature and relations of the 
goods, and then the sin lies in the criminal disregard. So it is folly 
to hold glass as property without due regard to the nature and 
relations of glass ; but the folly lies in the disregard to its brittleness, 
and to the hard substances which expose it to be broken. It is 
both folly and crime to hold human beings " as property " without 
regard to physical, intellectual, social, and moral qualities and rela- 
tions ; but the folly and wickedness he in that criminal disregard. 
So far is the idea of property, in its limited and peculiar sense, from 
being the essential quality of the sin, that the sin would be substan- 
tially the same if those attributes of men were not regarded among 
your free neighbors up to your power. If the African population 
were free you would hold your relation to them sinfully if you did 
not regard them in all their qualities and relations as men. 

The condemnation for " withholding the eai-nings of the slave " 
is equally fallacious. " The slave does all the work, the master 
takes all the pay ! " Does he indeed ? "Whence, then, another 
plea? viz., that free labor is more profitable than slave labor, be- 
cause, forsooth, the slave gets a greater share of the pay than the 
freeman — more pay for less labor : his own maintenance, with that 
of his children and parents, and security for the future to boot I 
In truth, if the needs of the slave are duly cared for, the master 
does not " withhold the earnings of the slave." The capitalist, em- 
ploying labor on such terms as custom authorizes, and the laws of 
capital require, — the only terms on which capital can for any length 
of time pay labor, — is, in respect to withholding earnings, precisely 
on the same footing as the slaveholder, with the exception that the 
merciful slaveholder has the worst of the bargain. 

Jso doubt the capitalist, southern or northern, may withhold from 
labor its rightful earnings ; and in either case let the judgment be 
according to the fault. But when the slave is provided for accord- 



15 

ing to his wants and his master's means, then his earnings are not 
withheld, but bestowed just as truly as are paid the wages of the 
northern laborer. 

Do we then make light of slavery, or become the advocates and 
upholders of every evil in connection with it ? Alas, if we do ! 
Let not the reader condemn us for these necessary distinctions until 
he has heard us through- 



16 



CHAPTER 11. 

THE PROBLEM OF AFRICA IN" AMERICA. 

The evil of slavery admitted, the next preliminary in order to a 
remedial code must be the settled fact of an Jfrico- American pop- 
ulatwn. The African race is established, and must be provided for 
chiefly on our soil. The evil is to be remedied; it cannot be re- 
moved. The problem of Africa in America is the problem to be 
solved. 

The difl^culties which beset the actual case are such that the the- 
ory of removal is undoubtedly the simplest and easiest. Yet, if 
only a theory utterly impracticable, it leaves the question of a reme- 
dial code on the spot to our earnest and determined, if indeed still 
our reluctant consideration. 

That the African race cannot be removed, seems to me so plain 
as to supersede argument ; as to need only to be asserted ; all assump- 
tions and projects to the contrary notwithstanding. Be it for .^ood 
or evil, for weal or woe, the African race has become too numerous 
to be removed— cannot be removed /rom America to Africa so 
rapidly as to equal the natural increase, much less to exceed \t. 
Kothing but some criminal check put in the way — some principle 
of decay and decrease introduced, added to compulsory and unmer- 
ciful transportation, can remove the one half of the natural increase 
The evil must be remedied, not removed. The sooner this point is 
settled the better. 

This assertion, needing no argument, might find argument in the 
facts wh.ch meet the writer as he repeats from an article published 
in 1820. '• The Colonization Society is a noble institution, and in 
behalf of Africa we have no doubt will elFect much ; but it will and 
must leave us an increasing black population. It is immensely im- 
portant that we duly consider the subject, and enter without delay 
upon the best measures for reforming and improving a population 



17 

"wliicli we must retain." More than one third of a century has 
passed, and how stands the assumption that needs no argument ? 
The population which we began to remove has since then doubled 
its numbers — increasing very nearly in the same proportion as the 
white race, with all their advantages of a multitudinous immigra- 
tion added to the natural increase. 

Let the most favorable view be taken. Let it be supposed that 
the prosperity of Liberia shall become such as to make it the great 
point of attraction for the colored race ; that open space shall be 
found for the multitudes eager to emigrate, and that, whether by 
public aids or private means, emigration becomes as easy as a large 
European and American commerce has made that from the British 
Isles, what then can you expect ? " The British Islands in the 
year 1792 contained a population of fifteen and a half millions. At 
the present moment the population is probably not less than thirty 
millions." * 

The largest emigration which the world ever saw, finding room 
in every quarter of the globe, and borne on the wings of a uni- 
versal commerce over every sea. has but doubled the population 
from which it has flowed. If America could send to Africa with 
equal facilities, and in the same proportion, she would but increase 
the number of her Africo- Americans, and at the end of sixty years 
would find the race doubled on her hands. It is time to awake 
from the dream of removing^ to the earnest and determined work 
of remedying the evil. 

All this is said in utmost friendship for the Colonization Society. 
Though it cannot remove or lessen the African population of this 
country, there are purposes which it is fitted to accomplish, and in 
its proper sphere it is worthy of all praise and cooperation. It 
may improve Africo-Americans by the responsibilities and priv- 
ileges of Liberia on the one hand, and on the other by showing that 
the welfare of the African, like the European race, must be found 
not in the wealth or station of a favored few, but in the protected 
industry of the many. It may establish a civihzed and Christian 
commonwealth on the coast of Africa, which shall aid in the aboli- 
tion of the slave trade, and in extending civilization and Christianity 

• See Blackwood's Magazine, March, IS-to, and Xew York Observer, 
March 10. 

2« 



18 

over that wide continent. If it succeed in these high purposes, it 
is impossible to estimate its worth ; and even though it were utterly 
to fail, the attempt will not have been in vain. 

It belongs to this chapter to demand room for the African race — 
room for their necessary increase and for their prosperous spread ; for 
an African as well as an American emigration ; a Southern West, 
suited to the Southern East, as well as a Northern West, suited to 
the Northern East. In a word, the territorial West cannot be dis- 
regarded in providing for the welfare of the African race. Their 
welfare is not to be secured by limiting them to their present boun- 
daries, but by giving them the same room for expansion and im- 
provement as the white race. 

How this can be done in regard to the present slaves, or even the 
present free blacks, is a question not now requiring to be answered. 
We only demand at present, as a necessary condition of their well- 
being, room for expansion in connection with the white population 
of the South — a ielt of both races from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
now that both are to be considered as equally settled in the land. 

The great southern statesman was right, not only in view of the 
■welfare of the masters, but of the slaves, in claiming that the African 
race shall not be shut up within its present limits — that the South 
shall have an emigrating West for all its people as well as the 
North. All that can be required on the other hand is, that the 
emigration from the South shall carry with it no element of misery 
which a wise benevolence can cast off. 



19 



CHAPTER III. 

CLIMATE AND PRODUCTIONS ; ORIGINAL AND ACTUAL CONDITION 

The African race being considered as established, and to be pro- 
vided for, chiefly on our soil, it must next be claimed that in our 
care for them we regard the climate and productions of the South, 
and the original and actual condition of the race. 

As to climate and productions, this postulate is, of course, less and 
less needful, as we approach the line where the differences vanish. 
Applying ourselves to the comparison at distant points — to South 
Carolina and Massachusetts, for instance — it may be asserted, as 
impossible to establish northern equality at the South, under pro- 
visions and laws of nature which produce inequality ; which would 
have produced it if social equality had existed at first, and which 
would reproduce and maintain it over any enactments to the con- 
trary. Mr. Webster stated the case at Rochester in 1843, bringing 
the "West Indies into comparison with New York. The nature of 
the crops, the production in one climate of what is wanted in all 
climates, and therefore requiring to be exchanged for the necessa- 
ries of life, destine them to commercial purposes, and not to imme- 
diate use. There must be cultivation and disposal on a large scale, 
with capital and proprietorship on the one hand, and employment 
and dependence, in a word, with service, on the other. If the South 
had been settled like the North, chiefly by one race ; and had it 
begun its agriculture on the same scale of small proprietorship, the 
nature of the case would at length have brought to pass, in degree, tlie 
distinction which now prevails — capital and proprietorship on the 
one hand, and dependent service on the other ; of masters and ser- 
vants. This distinction will not vanish by any change in the insti- 
tution of slavery, and any method of relief must regard it as un- 
changeable. Even if the African race could become sole possessors 
of the soil, by an equal subdivision, and with the energy and skill 



20 



of the European race, the consequence would not be northern 
equahtj, but southern inequality. The smaller number would be- 
come proprietors, and the larger number dependent laborers, and 
the distmction would obtain among them of masters to be honored 
and servants to honor, as in degree in all lands, and the special 
necessity in the culture and disposal of southern productions. Even 
the North does not, cannot carry its equalizing principle through soci- 
ety, but makes and shows like distinctions in proportion as it be- 
comes m like circumstances; i. e., wherever capital and proprie- 
torship have scope, as in the great commercial and manufacturing 
arrangements. ^ 

This social inequality, which cannot be prevented, it is still more 
difficult to set aside. If there were not the actual necessity, there 
IS the actual fact, which it is impossible to annul, not only without 
violating all the rights of property, but to annul at all. So imperi- 
ous IS the actual fact, that even in northern countries it perpetuates 
Itself, and admits only corrections and directions of what cannot be 
set aside. The abolition of slavery, and an agrarian law, could not 
annul what nature and Providence, what climate and time, have 
settled at the South. 

But there is also to be regarded the original and actual condi- 
Hon of the enslaved race. The North is settled chiefly by the Anc^lo- 
Saxon race; whether superior by nature, or not, it is needless to ik. 
At the time of their emigration, they were, at this present, they 
are, farther advanced in civilization, more enterprising and perse- 
venng, with more science and art, with more skill and capital, and 
with the advantage in the main of a homogeneous population. The 
mere abolition of jlavery, with the franchises of the North, and an 
agrarian law besides, would not give to the Africans of the South 
at the instant, what they had not when they came, and have not 
now; what their fathers had not, and did not leave, as seed sown 
for their inheritance, viz., the enterprise, and perseverance, and skill, 
and capital of the white race. No law of equal privilege could 
remove the actual difference, any more than it could have removed 
the actual difference between the inhabitants of Great Britain 
and of the coast of Guinea a hundred and fifty years a-o In a 
word, if slavery has hindered the well-being of the slaves and of the 
whole South, it is not slavery merely. In degree at least, it is a 
lower civilization; a greater barbarism and poverty at the starting. 



21 

point of emigration. The South less blessed than the North, because 
slavery has cursed them ! and ready to be as blessed the moment 
slavery is abolished ! Strange delusion! which forgets that almost 
half the population of the South were African barbarians, without 
enterprise, and perseverance, and skill, and capital, and therefore a 
dead weight, almost, upon the land which they came to inhabit 
Many of the disadvantages of the South would have existed, if her 
African population had been free from the first ; and would remain 
and grow, if an ill-advised and ill-regulated freedom were now to 
be bestowed. 

Let it be supposed for a moment that the immigration of the south- 
ern negroes had been free ; that the colonists from Africa, like the 
colonists from Europe, had come of their own accord, yet with the 
difference in fact existing between the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of 
Great Britain and the inhabitants of the coast of Guinea. Can it 
be supposed that mere freedom would have put them and their pos- 
terity on an equality with the white race, and have given to the 
whole unhomogeneous South equal advantages with the homogene- 
ous North? Must not the great mass of the African race have been 
"held to labor" by the race which was most advanced at the start- 
ing-point, and have found in that doom their best advantage ; and 
the surest misery if they neglected or refused the boon ? Nay, un- 
less early and wise precautions had been employed, must there not 
have been a disadvantage to the State from the discordance of its 
original settlers ? Would the African race have been at this mo- 
ment an equal pillar of the public weal with the one half of the 
homogeneous people of the North ? Surely it is not slavery alone 
which requires to be remedied, but evils which came with the race, 
and will remain after any mere decree of abolition, and which 
require a remedial code suited to the actual case. 

The disadvantage supposed, even with a free African emigration, 
must of course have been enhanced by the special ditferences of the 
two races ; such that they could not readily mingle and become 
homogeneous. No matter which race be of superior mould ; it ia 
enough that they are unlike — that the African is not equally agree- 
able to the European as his own blood, for other reasons besides 
color, in which they do not differ greatly from the straight-haiied and 
fine-featured people of the East. The physical characteristics of 
the negro must have aided in dooming hiro to servile employments, 



22 

in fixing him in the lower stratum of society, and at the sam^ rime 
in patting the whole southern community under the disadvantage 
of an unhomogeneous people, requiring peculiar remedies, 

Xav. more ; so certain is the operation of natural causes, that we 
jiav safelr say, if the North had been under the same disadvantage 
of settlement, and had thence inherited even a free African popu- 
lation in the proportion of one third, neither that one third, nor the 
uncongenial mass, would show the present North as it now stands, 
in contrast with the present South. The contrast between Ohio and 
Kentueiy. between New England and the Carolinas, had not been 
then as now. Millions of free blacks, fi^e from their ver^■ emigra- 
tion ftwm the barbarism of Africa, with twofold as many millions 
of free Anglo-Saxons ; — who can tell what might have bet^n the 
disadvantage to either or to both? whether more or less than slavery 
itself has brought. "Who can question that the North could not 
have been the North it is, if a good Providence had not given us a 
homogeneous and a civilized people, with small exception, from the 
first? And can any one think that slavery abolished, and the pres- 
ent slaves remaining free on southern soil, would put the South on 
the footing of the North ? Nay, who dares to say that a free emi- 
gration of the African race into all our Anglo-Saxon franchises and 
privileges would not hinder or blast our prosperity even now? 
^ The black code of Ohio " indicates a sense of exposure — is her 
acknowledgment that a " white code " does not proN-ide for the 
wants of an unhomogeneous mass — is the acknowle«Igment of the 
North that a remedial code for the South must regard the origi- 
nal and actual condition of its servile race. There may be, and 
now that the difficulty exists, there must be, sougiit a method of 
relief; but there is an actual hinderance at thcwSouth in the incon- 
geaialitr of its people, Carthage, under the disadvantage of bloods 
that would not mingle, could not cope with Rome, nor e>taMi>h her 
own durable prosperity.* If we are allowed to hope for the future 
well-being of the South, notwithstanding the same di:'advaiuage, it 
is because History and Christianity unite to give us a wisdom which 
Carthage had not — the wisdom to Wess, in our mid>t, and with our- 
selves, a people whom we cannot remove. 

• Arnold's Kome, Vol. IL Chap. XXXIX. 



23 



CHAPTEE IT. 

THX v^^:-IOS TUEXED TO TTXLL-SiirS-G. 

Peo-Slatebt ! Axti-Slateet ! And are tht-~e :r.e :i." j ^:ri5 
which can meet the case <^ the serrik popolauoa of u>c SouiL. or 
<^ the mixfri ^bole of masters and so-raitfs, bood aad irte ': Are 
these the onlv words which can give directiao to onr fefnaaons, and 
must we take pan for the one or the other ? 

On the one hand, does the word pro-dacery fill Ae desire of the 
Christian patriarch, in behalf of his famDj aranzxi him? Does it 
s&tisfj a patriarchal Siate? Is the institatkiii in ks actoal farm, 
darerj as ii is. so tmlj and comjiktefy patziardud, as to be worthj 
to be retained and cherished, with whatever woe as w^ as weal, to 
both nuistei^ and servants, now and ferever ? On the other haxid, 
does caUislavery embrace all that the Christian philaitthropist, aU 
that the philanthropic State shoold se^ in order to cairj oot htm- 
esily and faithfaQT the oomaand, ~ Thoa ^Halr love thj ne^bbar as 
thvself " ? Is antS-slxTaj, in its actual idea and pnogmamey the 
desideratum for the enslaved race — for either race — for both races 
in their necessarr dwelling t.::^ether. so dearlr. that it deserves to 
be the only and the headlong aim ? 2fav, do the Ouisiian philan- 
thropists, do the philanihropie Stares of the 2sonh, see anii-slavery 
and immediate abolition in so clear a light, with so sincere an eye, 
that thev are ready to welcome to their own bosom a finee negro 
population, in the proportion of one third or one half of the whole, 
without question as to the boon or the burden ? as to the heJp or 
the hinderance of their iurore prosperity ? as to the advantage even 
of that third, or moiety, itself? 

Anti-slavery ! pro-slavery '. Is it absolutely settled that the par- 
ties who reproach each other with these names can have no odier 
relation but as opposites and e-cemies ? Is there Dc»t something to 
seek aiter, ay, and to find, whidi neither word signifies ? a fuettiom 



24 

of well-being superseding both, above and beyond both ; in seeking 
which the Christian patriarch and the Christian philanthropist may 
earnestly and cordially unite ? 

The question, then, of well-being, and not of abolishing or retain- 
ing slavery, is claimed as the question which the Christian patriarch 
and philanthropist, which patriarchal and philanthropic States, have 
before them — a question just as open, as with regard to any other 
degraded and afflicted people on the face of the earth ; each requir- 
ing an answer in view of their whole history and condition ; suited 
at once to the great principles of justice and kindness, and to its 
own specific degradation and affliction. The question, What can 
be done for the well-being of the servile population of the South ? 
is just as free for inquiry and discussion as concerning any other 
unfortunate portion of mankind — the Hindoos, the Chinese, or the 
present inhabitants of the coast of Guinea ; each requiring an an- 
swer differing from the others, and all from the true answer for the 
Africans of the South. 

Unhappily, this question of well-being is kept out of sight amidst 
the earnest discussions of the times. On the one hand, personal 
freedom is assumed as an absolute good, and m. i\\\s ^'^ petitio prin- 
cipii " the great question of practical well-being is altogether over- 
looked, and with it the imperative duty, the glorious opportunity, of 
blessing the peculiar people on our hands, by philanthropic regula- 
tion and care ; and on the other, slavery as it is, is claimed as the 
absolute necessity of the slaveholding States, instead of patriarchal 
amelioration, up to the point of that well-regulated freedom in which 
philanthropist and patriarch should meet. The Christian patriarch 
and the Christian philanthropist need not be at variance, if they 
will but unite in the simple attempt to promote the well-being of 
the slaves, in and with, as its only possible condition, the well-being 
of the whole people. 

No doubt, in some sense, it were easier to cut all bonds and leave 
the slaves, set free, to shift for themselves as then best they might. 
But is this the method for a Christian State? for the Christian phi- 
lanthropist and patriarch ? Can the evils of slavery be rectified by 
the mere act of release ? the mere loosing of bonds ? without pre- 
serving whatever good may at present exist, and providing that the 
future may be safe and prosperous, according to our power ? 

Admit the evil to be such that no man can rightly reduce another 



25 

man to slavery, any more than to poverty, sickness, or broken bones ; 
admit that slavery as it is, has woes more than belong to a merely 
servile condition, and demanding the speediest possible remedy ; it 
does not follow thence, that the whole condition of the enslaved 
requires to be changed, without discrimination of the evil and the 
good. You must remove the evil, but you must not remove the 
good ; you must remove the injurious and destructive, but you must 
not remove the beneficial and conservative. 

This duty of holding fast the good and casting off the evil only, 
is made imperative by manifest disabilities in the people whose well- 
being we seek ; with the inheritance of less enterprise, and energy, 
and perseverance, and skill, and capital, than the Saxon race ; nay, 
with less capacity of available labor than the myriad crowds from 
European lauds, and incapable of competing with Irish and German 
toil. Have we nothing to do but to cut their bonds and leave them to 
themselves ? Can we turn them off to be underbidden and overridden 
and oppressed, to be driven out before skill, and capital, and labor, 
miserable and destitute, to find their only relief in wastmg from 
the earth, like the aboriginal freeman, the red man, before them? 
Can we release, not merely the slave from his master, but the mas- 
ter from his slave ? Can a Christian State, philanthropic and patri- 
archal in very truth, release the master from his slave, without 
securing to the slave his labor and his pay ; or the slave from his 
master, without securing labor for pay ? A Christian State, phil- 
anthropic and patriarchal, is bound to abolish just so much of 
slavery as it is, as is injurious, and no more ; to retain just so much 
as is beneficial, and no less ; seeking in very deed the well-being of 
the enslaved race, and that common good in which alone their wel- 
fare can be found. 

The Christian patriarch then, the patriarchal State, instead of 
cleaving to slavery as it is, will inquire if there are not points in 
which woe can be made less, and weal advanced ; points of well- 
being to be regarded, which secured would change the meaning of 
the odious word, and exalt the slaveholder into a Christian patriarch. 
The Christian philanthropist also, the philanthropic State, instead 
of abolishing the institution, is bound to inquire whether emancipa- 
tion at the instant, without conditions, will prove the remedy it 
seems ; whether it might not abolish good as well as evil, and bring 
evil as well as good ; might not miss points of well-being to the utter 
3 



26 

failure of the philanthropic intent ; whether, slavery abolished and 
the slaves made free, those freemen might not find a doom which 
would crave the boon of a truly patriarchal slavery? The question 
is on things, not words ; on substantial blessings, not empty names. 
Change the condition of the slaves into well-being ; make slavery 
truly patriarchal, and the name will suit its meaning to the change. 
Emancipate the slaves into the freedom of the North, into competi- 
tion with Anglo-Saxon enterprise, and energy, and skill, and capital, 
backed by European labor without count, and African freedom may 
come to mean the extremity of want and woe. The slaves deserve 
a better boon than such a freedom. Their rights forbid such a wrong. 
Their claims upon the soil require to be secured in the union of phil- 
anthropic and patriarchal care. 

I cannot see that this claim of a right care and direction to be 
preserved, while all wrong care and direction are set aside, is at all 
forbidden by the fact that the negro race were brought into bondage 
by unquestioned wrong doing on the part of our predecessors, or 
even had it been by ourselves. K a piratical corsair, in mid-ocean, 
were to be visited by a Christian repentance, it could not demit all 
the authority with which it found itself invested, but would retain 
what was needful for the safety and welfare of its captives and the 
common good of all — the power to navigate and govern the ship, 
and bring her and her inmates to the haven. Christian repentance 
would forbid the giving up the ship to incompetent navigators, or 
the mixed society on board to anarchy and misrule. A repentant 
pirate would retain charge, and maintain authority ; would give up 
the injurious and destructive ; would preserve the beneficial and 
conservative. 

But this demand of well-being is not to be understood as requir- 
ing security from all evils. That were a claim beyond not the doom 
only, but the needs of man ; beyond the merciful intention to make 
this world a school of discipline. That were to contravene the de- 
cree, and the consolation, and the direction, and the benediction ; 
" In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread ; — The poor ye 
have always with you; — In this world ye shall have tribulation; 
but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world ; — Faint not when 
thou art rebuked ; — Bear ye one another's burdens ; — Inasmuch as 
ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have 
done it unto me." No law of man, no preventive arrangement, no 



27 

binding or loosing can set aside what God designs of want and suf- 
fering, and mutual aid and relief. Hunger, and thirst, and naked- 
ness, and sickness, and calamity, and the care of providing for them, 
will remain, changing and interchanging in the most Christian com- 
munities, under the best productive and preventive regulations, piii- 
lanthiopic, patriarchal, to the utmost point; and this too, how far 
soever removed from that " over population," so wont to be assumed 
as the exponent of European woes. The law of human well-being 
is not, that mutual suffering and sympathy shall cease : no, neither 
with the high nor the low ; neither with the rich nor the poor ; nei- 
ther with the master nor the slave. The rich are not exalted 
above — in many respects are exalted irito wants and woes ; the 
poor, whether they be few or many ; the " masses " of the poor, are 
not depressed below the common ground of trial and of sympathy ; 
giving as well as receiving relief. Such is human lot for human 
good ; for the trial and strengthening of the suffering and relieving 
alike ; for the forming of character, the true boon of this life, and 
the true preparation for the life to come. Neither the giver nor the 
receiver of the cup of cold water shall lose his reward. 

Neither does our claim of well-being require release from all 
bonds. The principle, It is not good for man to be alone, belongs to 
all right, and to all rectified human obligations. The high cannot 
say to the low, the low cannot say to the high, the slave cannot say 
to his master, the master cannot say to the slave, I have no need 
of thee. The State has no wisdom, skill, nor power, that it can 
make its members free of each other. No decree, no law, can make 
man free of man. save by binding man to, man, in mutual obliga- 
tions. Bonds make free. Freedom from all bonds is the worst 
slavery. No community can make its members free, break what- 
ever fetters, abolish whatever slavery it will, without retaining the 
bonds which unite men to each other ; can emancipate the parts, 
without regarding the rules by which the whole can have a health- 
ful subsistence. No community can make its members free to bread 
without the sweat of the brow ; to wages, to " a living," without work ; 
nor its casual or providential heads, its hereditary or its moneyed 
aristocracy, its lords, its masters, its employers of every grade, 
to be served without rendering a reward ; to retain their capital 
without making it fulfil its proper function of providing labor and a 
living to their fellow-men ; to luxurious enjoyment of the fruits of 



28 



the earth without equalizing those fruits according to the relation in 
which thej stand to their kind. The presumptuous franchise will 
destroy itself. 

These great principles cannot be set aside in attempting a Re- 
medial Code for the South. There are bonds to be retained on the 
master as well as on the slave, on the slave as weU as on the mas- 
ter. The question is, What is for the well-being of the people ? 
whether bj bonds retained or bv bonds loosed. Bonds make free, 
be they but righteous bonds. Freedom enslaves, if it be an un- 
righteous freedom. The poet's lesson. Be bold, be bold, reiterated 
and jet corrected, Be not too bold, may be applied to the indiscrim- 
inate and absolute claim for freedom. Be free ; be free ; be free ; 
cannot be properly claimed of any people, save with that regard to 
its condition which shall give meaning and importance to th^e cau- 
tion, 3e not too free ! 



29 



CHAPTER V. 

AMERICAN" EXPERIMEXTS "WITH BAEBARISiT. 

Ix aid of our demand that well-being shall be the question, cer- 
tain comparisons force themselves upon our consideration. 

And first, of the Africo-American icith the aboriginal African. 
Unquestionably Slavery, with its bonds upon the master and the 
slave, has afforded some facilities for promoting the well-being of 
such a people, for forestalling evils, for securing advantages which 
neither their native freedom nor an unconditional emancipation can 
give. Without withdrawing one iota from the just condemnation 
of the slave trade, the enslaving which began our woes, or of 
slavery as it is, it may be boldly claimed, That the facilities afford- 
ed by slavery have, notwithstanding its great and crpng evils, actu- 
ally improved and exalted the race. If still suffering from the 
barbarism from which they sprang, and therefore requiring methods 
different from the Anglo-Saxon race, most cenainly they are not 
the barbarians they were ; are not the barbari-'.n; which their Afri- 
can contemporaries are. African barbarism remains what it was 
two hundred years ago. African barbarism, translated and enslaved, 
has changed into comparative civilization, by the advantages and 
notwithstanding the disadvantages of slavery. The African of 
America is not so degraded as in our forgetfulness we allege ; but 
has made large advance beyond the African barbarian from whom 
he sprang ; beyond his cotemporary of the Coast of Guinea. The 
free African " kept down," '• prevented from rising," by the influ- 
ence of slavery, as is asserted ; nay, the well-bred slave himself, 
and even the mass of Africans, bond and free, have actually risen 
far above their original degradation ; have actually become more 
capable of labor, more industrious, more vigorous, more persever- 
ing, more skilful, wiser, than their cousins of Congo and Benin. 
Tour educated preachers, your learned slaves, your eloquent advo- 
3* 



30 

cates of emancipation, and, as truly, your diligent and faithful 
slaves in the field, and the house, and the shop, and the counting- 
house also, and your multitudes of thriving, discreet, capable Free 
Blacks, many no doubt in the lower, but not a few in respectable 
stations of life, give proof of the assertion over all the land. Af- 
rica in America is superior to aboriginal Africa. " The colored 
man is not a savage," says Dr. Channing in aid of his argument 
for freedom, " to whom toil is torture. Labor was his first lesson, 
and he has been repeating it all his life." The pleas for emancipa- 
tion are grounded in part upon capabilities which slavery has pro- 
duced. 

This superiority claimed for the Africo-American, how does it 
show itself, now that he is carried back to the land of his fathers ! 
America in Africa is superior to the proper Africa itself, and is giv- 
ing proof of it before Europe and America, in a community capable 
of self-government, of regular industry, of the arts of civilization, 
of maintaining institutions of education and religion, of laying foun- 
dations and building thereon, of principles and progress. Says the 
Rev. J. Payne, Episcopal missionary at Cape Palmas, " The Amer- 
ico- African colonists, with all the disadvantages to which their social 
condition in the United States subjected them, are, to say the least, 
a century in advance of their heathen neighbors. Colonists fill al- 
ready every civil office in Liberia, the higher ones most ably ; why 
should they not, also, in time, fill all fh the church ? " * Says Rev. 
Mr. Miller, before a committee of the House of Lords, explaining 
the comparative advantage of Liberia over Sierra Leone with a 
much smaller expenditure, " Because Liberia is inhabited by a 
class of intelligent Christian negroes, while Sierra Leone is inhabi- 
ted by recaptured Africans, who are little removed from the state 
of barbarism in which they were found by British cruisers." 

But without authorities : — Let any one ask himself whether it had 
been possible to have formed a Liberia from aboriginal Africans ? 
whether there could have been found among them the same power 
to form, and preserve, and make grow a prosperous State, as is 
found among the coloifists from America, who, if " kept down" by 
slavery, have still most marvellously risen, giving proof that the 
principles by which they have been hindered, alone, are to be cast 

♦ African Repository, May, 1849, p. 134. 



31 

aside, while those by which they have thus risen are to be most 
anxiously preserved. In a word, let the injurious and destructive 
be removed, but hold fast and cherish the improving and conserva- 
tive ; that instead of losing what they have gained, they may only 
add to their gains whatever they have lost. 

Indeed, if in the inscrutable mystery of Providence there must 
needs be an Africo- American population — if the two races must 
needs meet in the new world ; the civilized, enterprising, perse- 
vering, skilful and rich European, and the barbarous and destitute 
African as he was, and as the present aboriginal African is, must 
we not say : It was wisely ordered, that social and political suprem- 
acy was settled with the race actually most capable of its functions. 
If the African race is to belt the South, it is well that the suprem- 
acy remains, if only it be maintained in Christian wisdom and 
kindness, with patriarchal and philanthropic care ; while yet, as in 
Liberia, there may be laid open for them chosen fields for the 
experiment of the highest social and political freedom. 

But still another comparison forces itself upon us : I mean that 
of the Aboriginal American with the Africo- American. There are 
conservative and beneficial influences in slavery, under which the 
African barbarian has multiplied, and become in degree civilized 
and capable of the arts of life. The North American Indian, left 
in his native freedom, has wasted and perished from the land of his 
fathers. 

Would we then have enslaved the Indians in order to preserve 
and exalt them? By no means. We justify neither Las Casas, 
who proposed negro slavery in order to keep the Indians free, (for 
he did not justify himself,) nor the colonists whose wrong-doing 
prompted the mistaken kindness of the father. Neither do we see 
clearly how a beneficial conservatism and restraint could have been 
undertaken in behalf of American savages. And yet from the double 
experiment of slavery and freedom, and their contrasted issues, we 
may learn to look, where we have the power and opportunity, for some- 
thing better than unconditional emancipation, than the abolition of the 
tried and proved elements of African well-being. After having des- 
troyed (almost) the one race of barbarians because they were too free, 
•we will beware of removing the bonds by which we have actually 
preserved, extended, and in very deed improved and exalted the 
other. 



32 




^ ^* ^.^* '^'^ ""^ be said -The Indians are do<«ied to 
'^■W*"' beftre cnribed men: " kow easilv Faie mav be assumed 
«ti»ee^Jawtk«rftke»dawiolj-&cL Wich like ^^im it was 
said (»ee,if«tee aUmts a racwi», mtil the discoverv that ^-af^l^e'3 
™ ]nited to thirtr-two feet ; above whick X.jtitre ICked 
Kiteze, &te, or what not, iOxt a vaewem of savages in 
I witk the emiaed, if they be red asd straight-hairei b«t 
k tf they be black and woonr-headed I String freaks of 
K^nre ! and strange fkaeeoptj '. How much better to sav. Bar- 
hMiaas, if ih^j can be "held to labGr," tr^ied and ruled' to diK- 
eewie^erds-. regnlariry, under the exMrntfUetia, civilized and Chris- 
tie coMumitv. may be preserved and Biri»q«eA and trained; may 
groir pregresavely in weD-being ; whife fipeedm, idleness, and vice 
win prerc their rein. Out rf the fctim of &e abhorrence of a 
,w« get nothing but fiaojipoirtM* as ire d%; out of tiw 
t of the presure of the atmosphere, how are 
sand art! From the fiction of a doom up«j 
tfee^ior^iBal American, cooies ooddi^ but wh<Jesale destruction 
<^ savage tribes; &om the ametasioBs of experience, what resnfe 
■ay WB gMof Afiricaa wefl-beii^ bating our own I^i and trans- 
jiateA &al it na^ ovwspread A&ka. itself An ameliorated ^a- 
rerv— a weQ-regui^ed freedom, caB it bv whichever name voa 
wilL wiA scope to a5pire after fee higher franchises, E the true wn- 
-- - " - " - Anrrioan eiperimoits with barbarism- 




I ».-. 

riaa 

ee — ic ii : 



5i 



■z.tljJ : 
















- 






























;rx 


S 3lIC 








_ 




1^ - -I «*as 


» .- 


" - — 


. - ; ^r^^s. — 


ITT - _ _ _. - 



1 'it^-^ X ^ bin • i. cnij- 



34 

loosed for the well-being of either, for the well-being of the whole. 
Serfs and lords woidd have been mutually more free if they had 
been mutually more bound. Let not the paradox be hastily dis- 
carded. 

Before loosing all bonds, whether of master or slave, the Nine- 
teenth century should ask of the centuries which have gone before, 
whether, in solving its great problem, the preventive ounce may not 
prevail against the pound which modern Europe shows hindering 
or baffling cure. There can be no question that the serfdom of the 
middle ages did in degree provide food, and raiment, and shelter, 
and safety to the mass in exchange for labor, the degree varying 
according to the interests and character of the lord ; that serfdom 
gave some blessings which mere freedom would take away ; that it 
required and even secured some duties from the lords which an 
inconsiderate release might leave in neglect. If those mutual obli- 
gations which bind together the high and the low, be disregarded, 
the presumptuous franchise will destroy itself. The ini(]uity and 
the folly will be visited on successive generations. There will be 
" miserable masses," baffling relief, because too little " held to labor," 
and too little sustained by the laborer's hire ; and miserable prop- 
erty, also, a miserable hereditary or moneyed aristocracy, because 
property and rank did not cherish labor, did not benefit and com- 
fort the laborer. In a word, society will be less free for the want 
of mutual bonds. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of 
cure. In giving freedom to the slave, be sure that you do not 
enslave him to the " misery of the masses " of the nineteenth cen- 
tury — to want and woe. In giving freedom to the master, be sure 
that you do not enslave him to possessions which curse the possessor. 
Be sure, in your zeal, that you do not take away from the slave the 
points of well-being which bis very slavery secures ; nor fiom the 
master the salutary obligations of his lot. Do not release the slave 
without providing for his future support by his labor ; nor the mas- 
ter, without requiring him to yield that support for labor. 

The great social law of mutual interdependence cannot change — 
cannot be broken with impunity by the master more than by the 
slave ; by property and capital more than by labor. The law and 
the penalty are divinely declared in the imprecation of the Prince 
of Uz : * " If my land cry against me, or the furrows thereof com- 

* Job xxxi. 38. 



35 

plain ; if I have eaten the fruit thereof without money, or have 
caused the owners thereof to lose their life ; let thistles grow instead 
of wheat, and cockle instead of barley ; " — in the prophet's warn- 
ing : * " Hear ye this, ye which oppress the poor, which crush the 
needy ; the Lord God hath sworn by his holiness that, lo ! the days 
shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks, and 
your posterity with fish-hooks;" — in the apostle's denunciation : t 
"Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl, for your miseries that 
shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your gar- 
ments are moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver is cankered, and 
the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your 
flesh as it were fire. Behold the hire of the laborers who have 
reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth, 
and the cries of them which 1. reaped are entered into the ears 
of the Lord God of Sabaoth." The presumptuous franchise de- 
stroys itself. Surely the abolition of serfdom wanted some elements 
of Christian wisdom when it made property too free of obligation 
to maintain labor, and labor too free of obligation to sustain prop- 
erty } and " miserable masses," and property encumbered with woes 
and fears, have been the consequence. 

Whatever difficulty there may be in the illustrations required, 
there are some obvious points in the condition of Europe as con- 
nected with the abohtion of serfdom, to which we shall do well if 
we take heed in attempting a remedy for American slavery. In 
avoiding the points in which Christian Europe has failed, we may 
find the true amelioration, the rightly-regulated freedom, the very 
method of well-being, the preventive ounce, against miseries which 
cannot be weighed. { 

* Amos iv. 2. - 

t James v. 1. 

X The refusal to entertain the question of well-being, and the insisting on 
the absolute and immediate abolition of slavery, is the more remarkable in 
view of the strange projects for relief which the disastrous issue of the Euro- 
pean experiment has called forth ; in view of the new slavery proposed in 
remedy of the '< misery of the masses." Strange to see ! At the very mo- 
ment when we are so urgent for unconditional emancipation in America, the 
miseries of the free in Europe are looking for relief to new forms of servi- 
tude. The great problem of European revolutionists is, Hoxo to provide for 
U7ienslaved masses by enslaving them again ! — what new chains to impose in 
order to secure the well-being of the people ! * « * Strange to see ! 



36 

Looking, then, to tLe European experiment, what learn vre for 
our gnidance ? 

And iirst, from France? from her condition before the revolution 
of 1789, producing that revolution, with its horror and dismav ? the 
miseries of the low, and ihe still greater miseries of men of high 
estate ? from the imperfect remedy under the consulate and empire ? 
under the restored dynasty of 1815 ? under the revolution of 1830 ? 
raider the volcano and burning lava of 1848, with all its issues and 
uncertainries ? Whatever may be due to other causes, who can fail 
to trace the wants and woes of the high and the low, the rich and 
the poor, the lord and the serf, as they were sixty years ago, and in 
aU their varied forms, up to the present hour, to thai too free a free- 
dom which for some centuries took place of the ancient serfdom, of 
the mvf.ual honds, which, with many evils, had secured some bless- 
ings unto all ? 

Whatever difficulties may belong to a subject so variously related, 
we may confidently refer the destitution and misery of the lower 
orders in France before the revolution, and of course the subsequent 
miseries of the higher, in part, to the too great freedom of the lords 
to live where they pleased, and how they pleased, without regard- 
ing in their place and expenditure the advantage of the laborers on 
the soil ; expending in the luxury and dissipation of the capital the 
fruits of labor, instead of with the laborer, in just payment, and 
generous oversight and care ; and to the uncertain and oppressive 



In countries more fsToiably situated for emandpatioii than our own ; where 
there was neither in congeniality of race, nor floods of immigrating labor ; 
ndiher the diScxilty found by the negro in connection with the Saxon from 
the first, nor the new flood of Saxon and Celt upon the fields of toU, per- 
gonal freedom has ended ra such " misery of the masses," in such horrible 
and general destitution as makes men ask for bonds in ordo: to an available 
fi^edenn ; and in such misery of an hereditary and moneyed aristocracy also ; 
in such difficxilties, and OTeTthrows, and anxieties, and dismay, as have made 
the whole world stand aghast. How significant the sanction to the demand ! 
— Be not too free ; Bonds make fi^e, — found in the new and mistaken 
slaTery, in place of the too free personal freedom which preceded. Names 
do not alter thing?. Words of freedom cannot make the modem devices 
other than a new slarery in remedy of the ilia brought in by freedom too 
abaohitely abolished — of the evils of too free a freedom. Under the plausi- 
Ue names of fraternity, equality, socialism, what is called for but regulatioii, 
restriction, direction, bcmdi, in regard to labor, time, place, capital, property, 
hitherto too free ? 



37 

taxation, and restnuned and dii^xuraged mdastrr of tiii r'rd^cied 
peasanny. Xo wonder tLa: nii~erv ripened nzca ie p<;':r and ilie 
rich together, when the sw^eat of ±e brew ci:-:!:! no kr.rer earn 
bread, and the cries of - hire kep-: l<a.:-k bj fraid " hs^i -enrere-i into 
the ears of the Lori Go-i of Sac«ao:h-' In 17>C-. the r::r-il laborer 
of France was declared bj Arthur Tocrng to be s^v-zirr-^-j: p«r 
cent, poorer than thai of England ; the French peasin: n-:: one 
fourth as well provided as the> English peasan: ; - I-^ss a: Lis ease, 
worse fed, worse lodged, worse ck-the^i — remin-iing cne cf the 
miseries of Ireland." * How s^xn :>-2.jwed ie reverses i-e :o neg- 
lectful and onjosi pr<jperr;r an i ■:^ap::aL until ther- were - nsne^i with 
hooks,** and potieritj. and again py>s;erii7, '-with fish-hocks.' for 
the Tiolation of the great social law of mntoad interdepesdeBoe 
amp ng men! 

The like coimecticm is to t>e traced in the miseries of Irdiod, 
comparable in 1789 with the miseries of France, snd teioMy- fliK 
per cent, below the miseries of Finland ; for whr, tbea, fbr wiy 
continuing and growing xmtil now? For wbj? if boC becaHse prop- 
erty and capital have not performed their fbmctiaDS for faibor, wmi 
because labor has not performed its duty to property and capital ? 
or, fixing upon two obvious pcHuts ; in part, because Irdboid vas boC 
blessed with either advajatage of the 'poor laws" of EBialiHh, 
viz., provision for the aheolutdr needy and incapaUe, and iIk de- 
mand of labor from thoee aUe to work ; and in part becaose a«»- 
residenee has defrauded labor of boch wages and care. TIibs tkoae 
whom prop^ty and capital have forsaken, and who bsTe aba beea 
idle and negligent themselves, have perilled by th o B san i k , dauEt 
without hope c^ relief, and the abused ^ropextr and capital are 
cankered in the hands of their possessors, and ^ eat their flesh as it 
were dre.** An impoverished tenastzy m^ nake an 
ished arssiocracT. The - evictioiis " of HBEoabi 
the horrors of enraged hunger; Tatoeiess estates, or estales to 
which assassination and murder are entuled. maj be nAii e J, is 
part, to too manr bonds loosed — too few boods retained. 

That the princ^pJes of Irish misery may be dw BBore maaifia^ ft 
^ands m striHn^ eomtrast m'tk MA vwC-irmf, wbere for wiiij 
generatioi^ prc^terty and capital hare been fisdrfid to their !■■»■ 



tioDS ; where par has provided and rewarded labor, and where labor, 
ako, has been rendered for pav. Happilv the experiment of James I. 
h£is been called cp to give wisdom to the nineteenth century for the 
recovery of an afflicted and desolate people on the better principle 
of keeping on the soil, and restoring thereon, a ruined peasantry, 
instead of subetituting another people in their place- 

•^ It is now nearly two hundred and forty years," saya Sir Robert 
Peel, " since a Sovereign of this country, desirous of making a set- 
tlement in Ireland, sought the assistance of the city of London. 
He invited their cooperation in restoring what were then called the 
nunaled cities of Londonderry and Coleraine. If there be any 
party in this country which has reason to look back with pride on 
Ireland, and its connection with Ireland, it is the city of London. 
It is the city of London which has done more than parliament or 
proprietors to promote the interests of that country ; which has for- 
gotten the consideration of temporary gain, which has forgone pres- 
ent interest, which has sought a compensation for these sacrifices., 
by promoting the permanent welfare of the district with which it 
was connected. I hope, after the lapse of two hundred and forty 
years, that the city of London may be enabled again to promote 
the welfare of that comitry. It will act now upon other views, 
more liberal — more comprehensive than before. It will not seek, 
as it heretofore did, to expel the natives from the soiL It will seek 
to elevate their character, to encourage their industry, to find for 
them permanent employment, to instil the principles of order, of re- 
s^ect for the laws, of submission to authority." " Bat for Lister," 
aays the London Times, commenting on Sir Robert Peel, - but for 
Ulster, we should scarcely have hope. The estates of the city of 
London are an oasis in that social and almost physical waste. The 
coet of the plantation probably did not exceed the contributions of 
Londcn alone, to one year's expenses of the Revolutionary war. 
But the work stiU endures, flourishes and expands. * * * It bida 
feir to last out the world, so that to the end of time, a cultivated 
country and a prosperous people will be a Living record of the 
plantation of Uliter tmder James L" 

K the peasantry of England might be deservedly ranked far 
above that of France in 1789, or of Ireland at this moment, there, 
also, without question, those mutual bonds needful to make freedom 
avail to the personal and social well-being of all classes, fail in de- 



i.E.@l«»l,^«f 



«■ tfe vWIe, is dae !■ pott to ■hchI 
■Bfbe a.) 



«r the 



degree hsre pnaoted lAe 






sbj,* were koaii «■ ft wyciu jd»4 ea^i&il 
thevHlente&iw«f &e i^^eKea soft 



the people t» praviie iir lh iJMLln-& . and 



r iiiBleii, <o tke leiiiiiM fawhi i ^recdj W die !■«%. 

' If tkisMOta 

i^nktkeWi 

tke kMfc •■ Ubv, Am, ftr vUdk ikon smb «ln? of 

•ffaH, to ni» .iiiMfHiel iHoe frr Ike wetxsmrj ic&f ef tke 



Mt aUe tovoik^- Wt Jm^ -SeeeaAr^to pr««iAe vaik &r aek 
»8 »e ohie <tod c— — t tfcii ■ iw. get ts m^imumj ' «riBeclkS'w&, 
* to refie«« tke JtotwiLt paor. aad tkea mir, ami to find taapkn^ 
toCHt ior swk as are dUe to wk.* * Birit this teler pwt of tke 
d^- a«fe TTIiiiHoai, -^vttck juti i e^ to *e «« reCTbdoos 
«r 4e saliMeyflMale, dkodU «o k^ m k^i wMi ^«ker. k 

^■■^ ^^art «^^^^p4bBv ^«wbw^iJ." 'f' If ^^^k «^»4s ^^J bw«i Jl_t_ 

•hscwed, kov tnir wtmii ikere have beea toaiadl haafe aa jut up 
ertjaai faikac tkot batik ai-hc kaw keea tketch;- tosee fre« : — a 

aslcne&. bj which al tibe K^bers «r sadeiT vaaU ka^ keea V=a. 
iSuj ii ararthj tke eooaBBB^tfiMS «f tke •xeot eatoBcasator as tke 
Ea^i^lav:— «Aploa«asftnaei ia *e reiga af Qaeca ESiia- 

AdeA- 



•AfiBM-k: 



n. f( 



BlIT, r'w^ TIL 



40 

ing of million?, bv affording ihtrn ihe means, -with jTcper industry, 
of feeding and clothing themselves : "' * the whole on the great prin- 
ciple of these papers, of mutual bonds in order to mutual freedom ; 
thus stated by Blackstone in connection with these laws of Eliza- 
beth : •■ There is not a more necessary, or more certain maxim in 
the frame and constitution of society, than that every individual 
must contribute his share, in order to the well-being of the commu- 
nity; and surely they must be very deficient in sound policy who 
suflFer one half of a parish to continue idle, dissolute, and unem- 
ployed, and at length are amazed to find that the industry of the 
other half is not able to maintain the whole." 

The lesson is plain ; — "What might have been done easily with the 
ounces, has become impossible since they have grown to pounds and 
to tons. Or, varying the figure ; what might have been done with 
the sapling, is impossible with the full grown and gigantic trunk. 
What Europe could have prevented by due bonds on property and 
labor, when both were in the manageable state of the middle ages 
— what she might have done by an ameliorated serfdom, must be 
utterly beyond her power when all the facilities of the ancient sys- 
tem have passed away, and the work to be done has increased a 
thousand fold. The full grown miseries of centuries will not bfi 
removed by forces which might have availed in their infancy. 
The ancient oak will not be handled as if it were a sapling. 

And now, summing up the examples referred to in this chapter 
and the last : — the improvement of the African race, under certain 
advantages, amidst the disadvantages of slaveiy ; the deterioration 
and wasting away of the American aborigines, under certain disad- 
vantages, amidst the advantages of freedom ; and the " misery of 
the masses," with the concurrent misery of property and capital in 
Europe, for the lack of mutual bonds, illustrate the assertion — 
Bonds make free ; and justify the all important claim, that well- 
being shall be the question with regard to the slaves and masters 
of the South, whether by bonds loosed or bonds retained. The 
proprietor, the capitalist, the lord, the master, may " do what he wiU 
with his own," may live where he will, and how he will, only with 
due regard to the laborers who depend upon him ; or his freed 
wealth shall be worse to him than wholesome poverty itself. The 

* Commentaries, B. IV, Chap. XXXin. 



41 

ancient serf or the modem slave mav be made free of whatever 
bonds, and yet onlv in due regard to property and capital, to pro- 
prietor and capitalist, the natural helpers of labor, or his freedom 
will be less desirable than an ameliorated slavery. The presump- 
tuous franchise of labor without pay, or pay without labor, will des- 
troy itself. 

If this view be just — if bonds were needful to be retained, hun- 
dreds of years ago, when the liberty given was that of Europe, how 
much more now. when the emancipation proposed is into personal 
and political hberty, as it exists, full grown, on American soil. 

Granted, that the freedom of the North, personal and political, 
inherited from our English ancestors two hundred years ago, and 
full grown since, on the soil of the New World, is fitted to its place 
and people, and that it can even assimilate a multitudinous Euro- 
pean emigration, so perfectly, that from age to age we shaU be a 
homogeneous Republic, with no portion of the assimilated mass 
incapable of co-acting with the whole : — 

Does it follow thence, that even the nations of Europe in their 
place, and with their people — above all, does it follow that a race 
Eo different as the Negro, can be thus made free ? — that such a free- 
dom could be established and maintained ? — that such a freedom 
would not become their worst bondage ? Does it foUow that we 
can decree our freedom to them, as they have been, and are ? that 
we can emancipate them into what we enjoy ? that we can make for 
them in a day what God has made for us in centuries ? that it can 
be theirs, until, as with us, it unfold itself as the slow growth of 
ages ? that with us they can retain it, or if we were to vanish from 
the soil, could hold it for themselves? Miserable delusion! to think 
that you can call forth the full grown and solid oak, except by the 
process by which the acorn unfolds and strengthens itself, year after 
year, and age after age : — to take the last result of centuries of dis- 
cipline, and expect to build it up in Europe by a three days' emeute, 
or among three millions of Africo- Americans, by some decree of 
enfranchisement, some day of universal emancipation. Better far 
if that boon can be found, an ameliorated slavery, which shall prove 
itself a well regulated freedom ; better, far, to deal with the ounces, 
than to hazard the pounds and the tons, which no strength can lift ; 
to handle the sapling, than to wait for the full grown and enormous 
trunk of the twenty-second century. 
4* 



42 

The writer does not presume that he has accomplished the grand 
desideratum. His utmost hope is, that he has made an imperfect 
attempt in the right line, and may render some small aid in recall- 
ing his misguided countrymen from the wrong lines designated 
by the terms " pro-slavery " and " anti-slavery," from mutual 
reproaches about opposite impracticables, to union in seeking a 
practical good. He invokes the wisdom of the country, philan- 
thropic, patriarchal, to the utmost point, to perfect a method of well- 
being for the slaves, in and with the well-being of the European 
race — a method of well-being for our whole country, suffering and 
blessed together, in the suffering and blessing of each several mem- 
ber of the united body. 

With this hope, how might the philanthropist and patriarch weep 
in bitter repentance over the long refused opportunity — the long 
delayed wisdom ! What if this had been the attempt of the last 
twenty years, not to abolish slavery ; not to set the slave free of his 
master, or the master of his slave, but whether by binding or loos- 
ing, to promote the well-being of both and of the whole — the Nine- 
teenth century drawing this wisdom from all previous time. What 
if the Christian philanthropists of the North, and the Christian 
patriarchs of the South had united in this good attempt ; instead 
of clamor and anti-clamor, and jar and discord, making sweet 
harmony through all the land. How then may we suppose the 
evils of slavery already removed, and the blessings with slavery 
retained ; freedom established which is freedom indeed, suited to the 
actual condition of both races, of which we have said, Bonds make 
free ; the thing without the name, against and above all counter 
names ; liberty, equality, fraternity, in all the real good which those 
abused words can suggest ; without the anarchy, and overthrow, and 
bloodshed, and anxieties, and dreads, in the train of a false and flat- 
tering philanthropy ; a pattern to the European world, in recovering 
from the miseries of too free a freedom, and giving to the Nine- 
teenth century a glory which should not pass away. * * * 

If we find a method for the well-being of slaves and slaveholders, 
it may suggest a method for the well-being of " miserable masses," 
80 true to the law of mutual interdependence, so true to the unal- 
terable relations of property and labor, as shall repair the damage 
of too free a freedom, and bless all orders of society together 
" Bonds that make free " may come to be encouraged by American 
example. 



43 



CHAPTER Vn. 



THE RESPOXSIBILITT. 



The appeal is, necessarily, to a sense of responsibility. If this is 
not to be found, if it cannot be roused, then discussion, illustration, 
proposal, urgency, whether in regard to emancipation or well-being, 
are in vain. Of course tlie appeal for well-being is not to be put 
down, and that for emancipation set up, on the assumption that 
there is no sense of responsibility, or that no sense of responsi- 
bility can be roused ; — that slaveholders, that the " South," are 
BO absolutely selfish and unjust, so void of conscience, that discus- 
sion, illustration, proposal, urgency for the well-being of the slaves, 
is utterly useless. For ourselves, ice believe not only that there is 
an actual and fearful responsibility, in regard to the three millions 
of slaves, and the twenty millions with whom they are connected, 
and to the geometric ratio of the future, but a sense of it at the 
South, and among slaveholders to be appealed to, and to be more 
and more aroused, until the desire of philanthropist and patriarch 
shall be fulfilled in the well-being of the people, whether bond or 
free. However this may be, whatever and wherever the sense of 
it, there is a responsibility of which we are now to speak. 

And tliis responsibility is to God, for man. Let it be set forth as 
it is, with no diminution because it relates to Africans and slaves, 
and to those who stand to them in the relation of masters. 
The responsibility is to God, and to his perfect law : to the great 
law of truth, and justice, and kindness, which is to regulate the 
doing of man to man, with all the sanctions which belong to the 
breach and the observance, here and hereafter. The remedy of a 
great social evil, the provision for a great social good, is not to be 
accomplished save in reference to the highest sanctions of human 
conduct, save in reference to the supreme authority over man. 
" The wisdom of Numa " was not in vain, has not been in vain, in 



44 

recovering and establishing states — hsis been eveiy where acknowl- 
edged- pagan though it was, as better than atheistical philosophy, 
than philosophic indifference. Let it not be supposed that Chris- 
tian nation-^ can find an Atheistical wisdom ; can obtain a durable 
prosperity, without a conscientious righteousness. We have no 
remedy to propose, no appeal to make, which shall supersede a 
regard to the Supreme Ruler, and the supreme law. 

But there are limits to this responsibility. The astronomer is 
mad who burdens his conscience with the charge of winds, and 
clouds, and rains, and sunshine, and their influence upon the harvests 
by which man and beast must live. The philanthropist is mad who 
burdens his conscience with accomplishing his own estimate and plan 
for the well-being of his race ; who undertakes to overrule the great 
Overruler himself The responsibility — the sense of responsibility 
claimed and appealed to, in regard to the well-being of the African 
race in and with the well-being of the whole community — is to do 
what can be done ; is for right and wise attempts, and for aU that suc- 
cess which a good Providence may give. There is no responsibilty 
for impossibilities. There is no responsibility to remove aU evils, 
and secure all benefits, to equalize all conditions ; for that were a 
responsibility which exists not in regard to any nation on the face of 
the earth, and would destroy the school of discipline which God has 
appointed — would overrule the great Overruler. There are limits 
to human responsibility, and there is no responsibility beyond them. 
There is no responsibility to annul the laws of inequality in the 
varying conditions of men — to contravene the decree, ^ The poor 
ye shall always have with you," to be provided for by wages or by 
charity. !N"ot emancipatioo from aU bonds, not an Agrarian law, 
Dot a theoretic, not an absolute equality, are required of htunan 
responsibility. The Christian equalization is on the very principle 
of inequality : suited to the varying scene of human wealth and 
want, which human discipline requires ; is made by ^justice and 
kindness freely moving amidst human inequalities, amidst suffering 
aOBid relieving men : by means of which, '• he that gathereth much 
hath nothing over, and he that gathereth little hath no lack ; " in 
which the full prepare a harvest for their own necessities by sowing 
to those who are in want. There is, there can be, no responsibility 
to institute to-day, out of African elements, a British or American 
eondition — to make the two divisions of population of South Caro- 




final mSD die hamoffmeaas maaa ci . 
i^ is to do viiat oa be done fix* die 
tltejare, whether bj boods loosed or 
tice, kjodness ^xj iei|uue. 
Tbe le^onabiErT, thi 
course, first anddueflrytodKi 
Each master is personaBy regpo^fale to do aB he eaa, aoder aad 
with exLtlng lavs, both m the crarcBt care of ihoee viih vhoat le * 
finds himseif charged, and m ■■! iaj" Ac beat 
for dieir fbtore wdiare, wheAer darii^ or 
TThatever hindnmce mar be fbaad ia ^•nstim^ lav^ he 
to proiide agavBt to hi§ utmost powers. WhMerer Ae Seafie i 
do or leave ondoee, there e a petsoeal re^nasAiEtj £ar the ii 
ral of its ddaj. aceudiii* to whaterer povcts and £k3 




Bat espedaDj societT is respoviUe for a peat soomI erfl ; Ae 
State, that aiTsteiioQs persooali^, so dMcwlt to de^ne, bat wiidk 
the sapreme Bala- holds to aeeooM; — not ex pe see d bj the bob- 
areh's pRsompdon, " I aaa the Slate ;* or bj the icpahfc'& pndc^ 
-We govon aar>«lTes:* — the Scale, which the Kb^ of kiagi 
knows where to find and how to reward: &e boastfal head and the 
boastfol members haTii^ their mj^exioas ^are m the social re- 
rpoDsibilitj, vhedter bj pnfirical actioB or iaaetioa, bj jatLii ""I or in- 
dJSereoce, b j approTal or fisitpproraL The evil is social and poBti- 
cal, and the remedr most be sodal and political dba. The svr- 
eresgn State most provide lor the erikof the State; ms^topcn Ihe 
•mvj fiir the respoftahie actiaD of aS its memiwi' fiar the eoaunon 
good. What is eresy body's harness is nohodr'sL Lt i^ not cn on gh 
to sar that ereiy iafiridaal is rrrpnTJilr, wUe yet nobody is left 
distinctly and solemnly aceoaBlahle. The Slate iteelf is Ae peiian 
ality of which arrai^em^ris wke nad sahaaiy m^ be 
dat corporate and distinct exkienee by which it is a State, 
onity all the members are mysterioaEiy and la t jiai thij joined. 

The State, then, in its coiparaie ca|Mtiti, — yiiijinaini gi in i a g 
eat of the nec^aties md moral smgftiBtics of men ; Ae chfld of 
die past, the norae of die present, dw ] 
God has ordained, aad which no royal 
pnde can wrest from Hk hands; — enA twmJgn State fe nasjonFJ 
Ue to do an that its exisdas coostitatian admi^ and to niksfC iniB 
its ooostiTiitian whaterer needfol po w er s . 




46 

The State responsible, thus, for the use and extension of its pow- 
ers, must act through official persons, its necessary organs, legisla- 
tive, executive, judicial, for and with the whole body of which they 
are the organs. Official persons, the organs of the State, are them- 
selves responsible, not as individuals merely, but as public organs, 
for all the opportunities and powers which belong to their offices " 
severally, — not to their appointees principally, to their instructions 
or complaints, but to the Ruler of rulers, to do what he requires of 
them as the organs of a Christian State : 

«« Among the rulers of the earth 
A greater Ruler takes his seat : 
The God of heaven, as Judge, surTe3r3 
Those gods on high, and all their ways." 

But there are limits to the responsibility of the State, as there 
are limits to its sovereign power. It is bound to do what it can 
and no more ; what it has a right and ability to do and no more. 
Its organs, legislative, executive, judicial, are responsible only for 
what is right and possible to them as the organs of the State ; to 
act with and not against the constitution of the State whose organs 
they are ; to act, also, according and not contrary to the materials 
on which they have to act ; with and not without just consideration 
of all the relations in which they stand to the past, the present, and 
the future ; in view of aU the helps and hindrances which belong 
to the nature of men, ay, and to the very kinds and classes with 
whom they have to deal, and to the nature of the State whose organs 
they are — at once the child of the past, the nurse of the present, 
and the parent of the future, — regardful of the stream of custom 
and prescription which cannot be instantly created or destroyed ; 
which cannot be turned in its present fulness into new channels, 
without ruin and desolation in its course. 

Fixing, thus, chiefly, the responsibility upon slaveholders and the 
slaveholding States, in their separate sovereignties, it must still be 
claimed that there is a responsibility beside, or else tlie writer has 
no claim to a hearing, — is mistaken in his deep sense of duty. No 
doubt, within proper limitations, there is a responsibility at the 
North as well as at the South, — in every northern State and in 
every northern man, — just as we are responsible for the relief of 
misery the wide world over, according to our relations and our 



47 

powers, to do what in us lies for the benefit of oar fellow-men : not 
to govern where God and nature have given no authority, but in 
every way to aid and comfort in agreement with the laws of God 
and nature. There is no evU on the face of the earth which may 
not be rightly discussed, and for which just relief may not be at- 
tempted by any man on the face of the earth There is no sover- 
eign State so sovereign, no monarchy on a throne so high, no 
republic in its amassed supremacy so supreme, that it may not be 
confronted, ay, and roused, and reclaimed, and blessed by '' that 
same poor man." The humblest American may speak to the proud- 
est of the American States. Man to man may speak for man, 
under no other restrictions but to speak the words of truth, and 
justice, and kindness, as a Christian philanthropist, and no man 
or people has the right to gainsay. Homo sum, humani nihil a 
me alienum puto. 



43 



CHAPTER VIII. 

IRRESPONSIBILITY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Responsibility there is, no doubt, as upon every citizen, so upon 
the United States, to do what in us lies for the well-being of the 
•whole South, but " not to govern, where God or nature has given 
no authority ; " not to do, what in us does not lie, to regulate or 
abolish slavery in the States. These assertions are presumed to 
agree with the general sentiment of the country, and yet there are 
not wanting scruples and evasions, pretensions and attempts, which 
require that the irresponsibility of the United States should be care- 
fully stated and illustrated. And this not only to check useless in- 
terference, but to quicken the sense of the actual responsibility. If 
the responsibility is not on the United States, it is tremendously 
upon each separate State. The plea against action in the General 
Government does not lighten the charge of three millions of men 
and their posterity, which Divine Providence has laid upon the 
responsible States — isfot action "with no diminution because it 
relates to Africans and slaves," " not indeed to loose all bonds, but 
whether by bonds loosed or bonds retained, to seek their well-being 
in and with the well-bemg of the Avhole people." 

Still deferring our conception of the detail, our view of a Reme- 
dial code ; nothing can be more certain than the necessity of some 
specific and appropriate legislation for a peculiar race settled with 
us beyond removal, some great and comprehensive measure of Po- 
lice. Such a legislation, at once merciful and just, regardful of 
property and labor, suited to man, providing for the well-being of 
both races, worthy of the Christian philanthropist and the Christian 
patriarch alike, how would it prove the glory of the South and the 
joy of the North ; the oil of gladness and the dew of refreshing 
upon an indissoluble Union! 

In the hope of contributing to this result we proceed to state and 



49 

to illustrate the irresponsibility of the United States. "We dis- 
claim, then, utterly, all right in the United States to interfere with 
the separate States as to slavery. Whatever the duties of the 
States may be in their separate sovereignties, these are not the du- 
ties of the United States ; not more than they are the duties of any 
other government on the face of the earth ; not more than of Great 
Britain or France. Of course, the Congress of the United States 
has no duty of interference, more than the British Parliament or the 
French Legislative Assembly ; and the citizens of the United States 
as citizens, have no duty of interference more than the citizens of 
Great Britain or France. We have not even the " right of peti- 
tion " thereon : i. e. we have no right to move the United States to 
do what they have no right to do. The right to petition cannot ex- 
tend beyond the right to act. To petition Congress in the matter, 
would be as inconsistent and absurd as to forward petitions to Lon- 
don or Paris. Be the evil ever so great, be the duty of the sepa- 
rate States ever so imperious, whether of abolition or amelioration, 
neither Washington, London, nor Paris, can be ui-ged to interfere. 
Whatever the evil or the wrong of slavery, God has given the Uni- 
ted States no authority in the matter. The great Overruler has so 
overruled as to limit our right and our power, as to prevent our re- 
sponsibility. 

There are two questions concerning the responsibility of the 
United States. The one as under the Constitution, the other as for 
the Constitution itself, and for whatever alterations. It is not 
enough to say, we are not responsible under the Constitution, unless 
we can also say, we are not responsible for the Constitution. All 
that regards the former question will be sufficiently considered under 
the latter. 

We are not responsible then, for giving to the Slave-holding 
States the powers they have. We did not give what we might 
have kept. We are not continuing what we have the right and 
power to reclaim. There is an illusion in the popular phrase, 
'' the compromises of the Constitution." Neither the North 
nor the South seem to understand that their relations to each 
other were not their independent choice ; that they exist not at 
their pleasure, that they cannot be altered at their will. The 
Constitution is not a guilty compromise in regard to slavery, to be 
repented of and set aside by the North ; is not to be held fast at 
5 



the South, as a charter by mutual consent, but is to be retained by 
both, as a conformity to our actual condition ; to the grounds and 
necessities of our political state. The national sovereignty not 
only finds no responsibility in those delegated powers by which it is 
constitutionally sovereign ; but it finds none in those circumstances, 
those progressive events above human foresight or control, produc- 
ing and illustrating its powers and limitations, and by which the 
" powers that be," the united and separated sovereignties, " are or- 
dained of God." A glance at the divine work in forming the 
American Union in the harmony and distinction of National and 
State sovereignties, cannot fail to illustrate the subject. 

The arrangement, then, of limited supremacy in the central gov- 
ernment, and of separate state sovereignties in all but delegated 
powers, peculiar to the United States of America, is no device of 
man, no new work of the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, but the 
marvellous and mysterious work of Providence, then happily ac- 
cepted. " The powers that be are ordained of God." His overru- 
ling Providence settles where the responsibility lies ; who are irre- 
sponsible. The American arrangement — not our work, but His 
— has grown out of the Wittenagemot of Britain, a thousand years 
ago ; out of the wisdom of Alfred and the folly of John ; out of 
Anglo-Saxon privileges reclaimed in Magna Charta; out of the 
Parliaments of Tudors and Stuarts ; out of the controversies which 
prevailed, and the principles and sentiments which were ripening at 
the settlement of the Anglican New "World ; out of the House of 
Burgesses of Virginia, 1619, the first copy of the British Constitu- 
tion in the West ; the first germ of another England in America, 
in which the people beheld among themselves an image of the Bri- 
tish Constitution, which they reverenced as the most perfect model 
of government ; * out of the self-made commonwealth, debarked 
from the Mayflower at Plymouth, 1620; out of the charters of 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, and the reclamations 
of unchartered colonies ; out of the determination of the States, 
through all difficulties, to hold the inalienable privileges of English- 
men, to govern themselves on the principles of the Bi-itish Parlia- 
ment in each separate colony ; and finally, out of the circumstances 
by which they were wrought at once into method and habits of in- 

* Bancroft. 



51 

dependent action, and into an incipient and growing unity. That 
they were offsets from Enghind, made them partakers at their de- 
parture and in their settlement "of all the rights and privileges of 
Englishmen ; " and that they were planted in the midst of savage 
tribes prompted by European enemies, made of necessity each Co- 
lonial Legislature supreme in the highest act of sovereignty — in 
■war — waiting neither for one another, nor for Great Britain itself. 
That their exposure was common to all, and that their enemies had 
a bond of union in their connection with a great European power 
and by the waters of the "West, suggested and required a union 
practical and substantial, ever progressing towards a unity in form. 
Each colony became thus another England, and yet all so situated 
with reference to peace and war as to force the many Englands 
for common purposes into one. The absolute power of chartered 
companies or grantees under the Crown, and of the royal Duke 
himself — the British throne — Parliament — did not, could not, 
withstand the force of circumstances, the work of Providence, the 
ordinance of God, preparing separate sovereignties for union in 
common purposes under a limited supremacy. 

As union grew into form, how, from the earliest periods, was 
State supremacy at once maintained and yielded, until the slow but 
sure work of Providence produced our actual Union, as expressed 
in the Constitution ! '• Danger taught the colonies the necessity of 
union; and on the first day of May, 1690, New York beheld the 
momentous example of an American Congress," by the concurrence 
of other colonies with the proposal of Massachusetts, thus early 
preparing " the forms of independence and union." * 

"The Commissioners at Albany, 1754, were unanimously of opin- 
ion that a union of the colonies was necessary for the common 
defence against the French and Indians." Such, before the Revolu- 
tionary struggle, were the germs of union ; not of the confederation 
of 1781, but of the Constitution of 1787; springing up from the 
original circumstances and condition of the country — from prov- 
idential direction. As the revolutionary struggle advanced, how, in 
like manner, were State supremacy and central direction still grow- 
ing together, and still tending to that distribution of powers of which 
the Constitution is the hteral expression ! The actual assembhng of 

* Bancroft. 



52 

nine colonies, with the concurrence of others, at New York, Octo- 
ber, 1765, and their "agreement on a decUiration of rights, and on 
a statement of grievances;" the general Congress at Philadelphia, 
September, 1774, the whole uniting in the claim of " free and ex- 
clusive power of legislation in their several provincial legislatures," 
and this in right of emigration, as " free and natural-born subjects " 
of the " realm of England," and its subsequent acts of sovereignty 
for the common defence ; the imperfect convention acceded to in 
1781, retaining too much State sovereignty, and leaving too little 
with the common head ; declining the unity for which Providence 
had provided of separated sovereignties under a single sovereignty, 
and thereby requiring its renewal and its establishment; and finally, 
the actual settlement of the present Constitution in 1787, not in com- 
promise of opposing claims, but in conformity with the provisions 
of Nature and Providence, with the ordinance of God ; — all these 
were but so many stages of development according to necessity and 
circumstances, until the letter came to agree with the substance — 
the expression with the reality. The Constitution of the United 
States was not first made when it was voted and proffered to the 
people, but then merely unfolded and delivered as the gift of Heav- 
en, which ages had provided. Our fathers, like their fathers, in 
every stage of their progress, in all their remonstrances and dec- 
larations, claimed not new privileges, hut old ones; not what men 
could give, but what God had given ; brought with them across the 
Atlantic, and exalting their provincial assemblies into embryo Par- 
liaments ; each new England holding of right what no king or Par- 
liament could take away. Our fathers, like their fathers, the barons 
of Runnymede, and the Lords and Commons of later times, said, for 
substance, Wolumus leges AnglicB mutari : What God has given us 
must not be changed — cannot be changed. 

In aid of the progressive circumstances producing the union of 
separate and sovereign States lias been the physical structui-e of the 
country, fitted for local governments equally, whether on the nar- 
rowest or broadest scale, — for a Virginia and New York, or a Del- 
aware and Rhode Island, — and at the same time enabling and 
requiring the combination of many into one. The first settlements 
along the Atlantic border, so widely separate as to be obliged to act 
alone, found the ocean which washed their shores a bond of union, 
enabling them to unite for the common defence. As the settlements 



53 

extended, new bonds of union were found in the rivers and lakes 
of the North, and then again in the great rivers of the West, join- 
ing, almost, the lakes and rivers of the North, and binding all to 
the southern gulf; connecting the North and the South, the East 
and the West, as by the ordinances of nature itself, which cannot 
be changed. And then, as the States have grown stronger under 
the protection of the Union, how have they employed their pro- 
tected strength, not in sundering, but in strengthening and increas- 
ing the national bonds ; the States more capable of separate action 
because they were united, and employing that action in perfecting 
and establishing the Union ; binding themselves by separate acts 
of sovereignty more firmly into one ! New York building the Erie 
Canal ; Pennsylvania uniting the Delaware and the waters of the 
West and South ; and other States joining them, first in artificial 
watercourses, and now in railroads, the works of many separate 
States, overspreading the Union, bind together with new bands the 
four great quarters of the land into a still more indissoluble one. 
This view of necessary union, by means of physical condition, 
matched by a providential work, did not fail of influence in pro- 
ducing the letter of the Constitution, and in securing the formality 
of ratification. " It has often given me pleasure," says Governor 
Jay, urging the adoption of the Constitution, in concurrence with 
Madison and Hamilton, " to observe that independent America was 
not composed of detached and distinct territories, but that one con- 
nected, wide-spreading country was the portion of our western sons 
of liberty. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain 
round its borders, as if to bind it together ; while the most noble 
rivers in the world, running at convenient distances, present them 
with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the 
mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities." 
The effect of internal improvements by the authority of separate 
and sovereign States, in perfecting and continuing the Union, as the 
protecting Sovereign of the whole, is thus referred to by Mr. Clay, 
December 29, 1835, while yet the providential mystery of union, 
by separation, was but partly developed : — 

"The States have undertaken what the general government is 

prevented from accomplishing. They are strengthening the Union 

by various lines of communication thrown across and through the 

mountains. New York has completed one great chain ; Pennsyl- 

5* 



54 

vania another, bolder in conception, and far more arduous in execu- 
tion. Virginia has a similar work in progress, worthy of all her 
enterprise and energy. A fourth, farther south, where the parts of 
the Union are too loosely connected, has been projected. These 
and other similar undertakings completed, we may indulge the patri- 
otic hope that our Union will be bound together by ties and interests 
that shall render it indissoluble." 

Thus fax-, most certainly, the Constitution is conformity, not com- 
promise. State supremacy in all but delegated powers, and suprem- 
acy at the centre in those powers, is God's ordinance, and not man's 
device, leaving the responsibility for slavery with the States, forbid- 
ding it to the United States. The United States are not responsible 
under the Constitution, and are not responsible /or the Constititutioii! 
against all scruples and evasions, all pretensions and attempts to the: 
contrary. 



55 



CHAPTER IX. 

UNION BY SEPARATION. 

The work of Providence for a thousand years ; for one hundred 
and fifty years from the first settlement of this country, decided the 
American arrangement of State and National sovereignties — the 
facts, as the Constitution has expressed them in the letter. The 
force of circumstances, the necessities of our condition, inherited 
powers growing and developing in the progress of events, made the 
Constitution for us, not by us, as God's ordinance and not as man's 
device ; not by compromise, but conformity. The framers of the 
Constitution had this highest wisdom, that they perceived and ex- 
pressed what Providence had wrought. All honor to their memory ! 
This arrangement of Heaven finds illustration in the whole work 
of the States by which we became the United States above and 
against all enemies and rivals, and in the harmony of Central and 
State sovereignties as the United States. If the States had not 
been separately sovereign, we should never have become the 
United States at all ; and since we have become such, neither ab- 
sorption nor separation, neither concentration nor nullification, have 
been found to be possible. 

What, then, is it that has given the United States a place among 
the nations of the earth, as a great, undivided, and happy people ? 
How is it that the most perfect government of the European world 
has taken root and grown until it has spread itself almost from gulf 
to gulf, and from ocean to ocean ? — that a new and larger Eng- 
land has been established in America ? that we have another Magna 
Charta, parliaments, the English race, and language, and charac- 
ter, and principles, and literature, prevailing over all other Euro- 
pean claimants, over all enemies and rivals ? Is it not due to the 
separate State sovereignties that we are the United States at all ? 

Let it not be forgotten that the early advantage belonged to other 
nations ; — to France, occupying the northern and southern gulfs, 



56 

and their tributary rivers, with lines of military posts, and hostile 
tribes extending two thousand miles in our rear ; to Holland, at the 
mouth of the Hudson, the most important intermediate inlet, sepa- 
rating the English settlements from each other ; to Spain, even, 
especially when the others were no longer enemies or rivals, taking 
the place of France on the Gulf of Mexico and the rivers of the 
West, and with such hope as to establish a New Madrid almost at 
the mouth of the Ohio, as the future capital of the " Great (Span- 
ish) West." Whence came it that the English race — hemmed in 
upon the coast of the Atlantic, divided from each other by an inter- 
mediate State, shut out from the great inlets and intercourses, and 
incessantly assailed — so marvellously prevailed over all enemies 
and rivals ; nay, assimilated to themselves enemies and rivals, and 
are assimilating all other European nations into one undivided 
English people? Whence, but because at their beginning each 
State was a New England, with a parliament capable of govern- 
ment and action at every separate point of attack from that hostile 
array, and of uniting also for the common defence ? It was New 
England, for instance, with all the elements of our actual union, 
combining the forces of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecti- 
cut, and New Hampshire, which secured the surrender of Louis- 
burg, " the Gibraltar of America," June 17th, 1744. It was 
Virginia, with a constitutional life beating high from 1619, 
with a virtual sovereignty competent to devise and execute in 
regard to her Ohio frontier, which held fast to the valley of 
the west for the united whole, educating thus the " Father of his 
Country." It was the colonies, separate and combined, chiefly, 
which secured the surrender of the French posts on the western 
lakes and rivers, and the cession of Canada, 1760; and at length 
the whole land, from gulf to gulf, to one undivided English people, 
assimilated from all European nations, to be carried forth as one 
people, from ocean to ocean. This vast and growing nation, united 
by separation, more intimately blended into one than any other nation 
on the face of the globe — woven together by mutual relations and 
intercourse, as by the minutest threads, into one common, yet divid- 
ed unity, has been formed by means of separate States, whose 
principles of life have been the gift of a gracious Providence for a 
thousand years. We are what we are in the existing fact, because 
we were what we were in the very elements of our being. The 



57 

elements of tlie Constitution made the United States, not the United 
States the Constitution ; have given us our united and have left to 
us our separate responsibilities. 

And how has it been since we have been the United States? 
Have- we been able to set aside the ordinance of God which made 
us many, and thereby made us one ? to be less or more than sepa- 
rate sovereignties under a limited head? Even under the conven- 
tion of 1781, when we undertook to reverse the appointment of 
Heaven manifested in that closer union, which " danger " produced 
as early as 1 090, which the necessities of the " common defence " 
suggested in 1754, and which, against all reluctances of the States, 
was forced u[ion Congress and upon "Washington, that there might 
be one mind and action for the whole, in matters pertaining to the 
■whole, — how signally we failed ! "When common dangers and neces- 
sities ceased, we substituted for that powerful bond a rope of sand, 
that we might become what we had never been from the first, mere 
separate sovereignties. But did we remain so ? Could we thus set 
aside the unity which Providence had wrought for us, and which He 
bad made the condition of those single sovereignties we claimed ? 
How signally we acknowledged a bond never to be loosed, even when 
we thought we had refused to be bound at all I Strange to say ! 
That Providence which overrules the governments of men, which sees 
in the germ that which unfolds itself in the growth, which preserves 
above and beyond human forethought that which human forethought 
presumes to destroy, still kept in the minds of our fathers the sub- 
stantial idea and intention, at the very time they refused the form 
which His providence required. Claiming to be but thirteen sepa- 
rate States, under rules and methods which rendered united action 
impossible, they claimed, nevertheless, the reality and the substance 
of State sovereignties and central supremacy, for then, and for the 
future ; for the original thirteen States and for indefinite increase; 
for more and still more separate sovereignties, all becoming more 
and more united under a common head ! "What else meant they 
by the motto, adopted June 20th, 1782, "E Pluribus Unum," 
— many and yet one ; one and yet many, above and beyond all 
powers of division or of concentration, while by the letter of the 
"convention " they were many and not one ? "What else meant they 
by the reverse of that national seal, — by that significant emblem, 
that devout acknowledgment, — the unfinished pyramid, compact 



58 

and firm, to become more compact and firm the more stones are 
added to the structure ; and yet not by man's device, but by God's 
ordinance, under the ej-e of Heaven, and with the devout acknowl- 
edgment, " Annuit Coeptis," — God has built the United States, 
and will build them more and more perfectly in one. At the very 
time when the States claimed to be many and not one, ihey ac- 
knowledged the indissoluble unity which Providence had wrought. 

And since the adoption of the Constitution, — the conforming of 
the letter to the arrangements of Heaven, — how remarkably has 
the oi-dinance of God prevailed, making still the many one, and the 
one many. The States have not been able to be less or more than 
self-regulating States, under the protection of a supreme govern- 
ment : — The United States have not been able to be less or more 
than a supreme government amidst self-regulating and sovereign 
States. Absorption and separation, concentration and nullification, 
have been alike impossible. 

Thus, in every stage of progress, before and since the Convention 
of 1787, the Constitution of the United States is God's ordinance 
and not man's device ; the wisdom of its framers is manifest, not in 
compromising with the will of man, but in conformity to the wisdom 
of heaven ; no less in wliat is witliholden than in what is given, in 
what remains with the States, than in what is yielded to the con- 
federated head. In the words of Washington, applicable equally to 
a thousand years of the history of our fathers, and to more than 
two hundred from the settlement of these States: "Every step by 
which the United States have advanced to the character of an inde- 
pendent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of 
an overruling Providence." * Especially after the British Consti- 
tution was transplanted to these States, distinct and separate, and yet 
forced to both independent and united action ; — circumstances, dec- 
larations, acknowledgments, customs, precedents, common law, and 
common understanding, had settled at once State supremacy, and a 
confederated head, before the Convention of 1787, so that that Con- 
vention could not annul either — whose work was not compromise, 
but conformity to the work of Providence, which they could not over- 
rule. Nay, so absolute was that Providence, so controlling were cir- 
cumstances and events, that the Convention of 1787 could not have 

* Inaugural, 1789. 



59 

prevented, for substance, the present Constitution. Had they 
failed to form it, it would have gone on to form itself, developing and 
fixing the reahtj in anticipation of the letter. Nay, more ; so cer- 
tain and so determinate is the work of Providence, the ordinance 
of God, that it cannot now be set aside ; not the sovereignty of the 
States, not the supremacy of the United States. A Convention of 
1856 could not annul the great provisions of the Constitution forced 
upon us three score years ago — could restore neither the separate 
States nor the United States to the nominal powers and real impo- 
tence which followed the peace of 1783 — could not make the 
United States the seat of power and responsibility for the several 
parts. Impossible attempt ! which, adopted in the form of a new 
and accepted Constitution, would disappear like the baseless vis- 
ions of tlie night, leaving the substance which God has ordained 
— State sovereignties and limited supremacy, as settled principles 
of the American, as Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights, are of 
both it and the British Constitution ; as old and not new — the 
inheritance of the past, and not the gift of the present — conform- 
ity to Providential arrangement, and not compromise with the will 
of man. Impossible attempt ! to concentrate authority so as to 
make the United States responsible for what has been the separate 
work of the States ; or so to assume State powers as to set aside 
the legitimate and prescriptive supremacy of the United States. 

And do men dream that they ought to break up what God has 
thus established without their devices, above their work — to dissolve 
the Union formed by the Providential fittings and cements of many 
centuries ? Do men dream that they can resolve, and speak out of 
being, what God has spoken into being, above all counter-plans of 
their enemies and of themselves — that they can break up that union 
by which God has provided for the highest prosperity of each sev- 
eral part, and in that prosperity, for a more powerful and wider 
unity ? What if the provisions which God wrought out in a thou- 
sand years of Enghsh and Colonial history — the work of Divine 
Providence above and against man ; what if these were set aside, 
as "the mere letter which man's hand had written, the mere device 
and decree of the Philadelphia Convention — would they be set 
aside ? Could they ? What if the Union were dissolved by unan- 
imous vote, by peaceable consent, into two Unions, or three, or four, 
or into thirty sovereign States ; would the Union be dissolved ? 



60 

Could it ? Impossible ! again and again, impossible ! Not thus can 
man contravene the " powers ordained of God " ; not thus destroy 
in a day, God's work for centuries — not thus break down the pyr- 
amid built, and still rising, compact and firm under the eye of the 
Omnipotent! Dissolve the Union! Why, we should still lie bound 
together by the same waters, the same oceans, and gulf-, and bays, 
and rivers, and lakes, which God has given us in common ; and by 
the same canals and railroads which, under his ordinances, our hands 
have built; binding us into an indissoluble one! — bound together 
by the same necessities, and facilities of mutual intercourse — the 
same inherited and prescriptive powers of acting separately for sep- 
arate purposes, and of acting together, for purposes common to all ! 
Dissolve the Union ! Why, the Union would return upon us again, 
as it did when we attempted to dissolve it in 1781 — when we 
preferred to be parts, and not a whole — would return as it did in 
1787 — in the letter of the Constitution. 

A Convention of 1856, could it dissolve the Union? The States 
north of Mason and Dixon's line — the States south of that sec- 
tional boundary — under whatever scruples or jealousies, can 
they recede ? Could they dissolve the Union ? We venture to 
say that if a dissolution of the Union should take place, with what- 
ever unanimity of decision or permission, that it would not take 
place ; that it would be as nugatory as the (quasi) dissolution of 
1781, M'hich produced the letter of the Constitution. King John 
and King James may think that they can break up the Providen- 
tial arrangements which are growing into the British Constitution, 
that they can make a subservient or a despotic monarchy ; but they 
cannot. The Constitution reappears above them and against them, 
as the growth of the olden time, in a new Magna Charta, and a 
new Bill of Rights. The northern States may think they can with- 
draw from the southern, and thus only be innocent of their errors ; 
the southern may think they can withdraw from the northern, and 
thus only be safe from their interference; but they cannot put 
asunder what God has joined together. Above and against them, 
the Constitution will reappear, and the union of State sovereignties 
be more and more established. 

There is but one exception to this assumption. No doubt sepa- 
ration into two hostile parts is possible, at the sword's point, at the 
cannon's mouth, along the dividing line. At war, there may be a 



61 

northern and southern Union ; but as with nations naturally and 
providentially distinct, the exhaustion of war compels to peace ; 
with States naturally and providentially connected, it would end in 
reunion. On two sides of a boundary of blood, we may be for a 
season two nations, until, wearied and worn out with violence and 
rapine, we become prepared, not for peace between nations, but 
for another cycle of Union, as a great national family, — as one 
great and undivided English people, responsible as a whole for 
what belongs to the whole, and as parts for what belongs to the 
parts. 

6 



62 



CHAPTER X. 

THE LAW OF EQUAL FORCES. 

Besides the fact that State sovereignty with union only in regard 
to matters in common, is God's ordinance and not man's device, 
and that the United States have therefore no authority in regard to 
slaveiy ; there is this further reason against all common legislation 
in the matter, that the great Overruler has so ordered the balance 
of sections, that if we had authority, it would be annulled by a 
necessary impotence. 

Owing to relative weight, to equilibrium of forces, the United States 
would be incapable of action, could never abolish or regulate slavery, 
even if they had the authority. Providence has so ordei'ed the con- 
dition of these United States, that neither the northern nor south- 
ern section can make an availing legislation against the will of the 
other. The North is as impotent as the South, the South as impo- 
tent as the North, by the law of equal forces. Sectional equili- 
brium must prevent any decisive exercise of a central authority, 
even if that authority existed. Where there is equal weight in both 
scales, the scales cannot be turned. Equal sections of the same 
country have only this alternative, ineffectual and injurious conten- 
tion, or to agree to differ, — submitting to inaction where there is 
no power to act. 

This equilibrium of sections, this impossibility of action, existed 
at the formation of the Constitution. Besides the inherited and pre- 
scriptive right of the States to manage their local affairs, the relative 
weight of sections forbade sectional action. There was no power in 
either scale to turn the balance. The States south of Mason and 
Dixon's line, and the States north of Mason and Dixon's line, were 
as nearly even poised as possible, (the minute slaveholding of the 
North notwithstanding,) and from that sectional balance inaction 
necessarily followed ; useless debate giving place to leaving matters 
as they were. This inaction was inevitable, save only in whatever 



63 

points both sections could agree, as for manifest reasons thej'^ did 
upon the foreign slave trade, limited to 1808. It was not compro- 
mise, but necessity ; it was not a criminal yielding to the will of 
the South, but a providential equilibrium, which left slavery exist- 
ing by the Constitution, and would have left it even thougli the 
United States had possessed authority in the case, unless equals can 
be unequals; unless equilibrium can turn the scales. 

The same principle has governed, not the action but the inac- 
tion of the United States, hitherto, in the admission of new slave- 
holding States. At every stage the previous sectional balance 
rendered that admission inevitable, — in each case ineffectual and 
injurious contention giving way to the necessary agreement to differ. 
Impossibility of action to the contrary, has preserved and continued 
the original equilibrium. The tree has only grown on both sides 
according to its former proportions. The evil may or may not be 
greater than would have ensued if the non-slaveholding States had 
bad both authority and power to open the whole South to a free 
African population ; but lipw plainly the new slaveholding States 
have been admitted into the Union by necessary inaction, by means 
of previous sectional balance ! It was no more possible to rule 
slavery out of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, than to rule it 
into Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. The southern territory, espe- 
cially adapted to the productions and labor of the South, became 
the natural field for southern emigration, as part and pai-cel of the 
actual southern population, with slavery, while relative weight 
assured it to them in the Union, against whatever will or opposition 
of the North. Nay, if the North had possessed a preponderance 
in the legislative halls, and could have passed a sectional vote against 
a large minority, the final result would not have been different ; 
so impossible is it to enforce decrees against the natural course of 
population, against the habits and prescriptions, against the will and 
opposition of great sections of a country. The most determined 
vigilance of a military police, the severest penalties and the most 
rigorous execution of sectional law against one third or one fourth 
part of the Union, would have been found ineffectual, and must at 
lengtli have yieMed to the pressure. However this may be, most 
certainly it would have been impossible to have carried out any 
law against the natural progress of the South towards the West, 
while the relative weight of both sections was substantially the same ; 



64 



— for equal sections to have been any thing else but a balance to 
each other. 

The impossibility ruling at the formation of the Constitution, 
and ruling since in the increasing number of the States, rules stiU, 
and would prevent the action of the United States for the regula- 
tion or abolition of southern slavery, by authority, precisely as it 
would be impossible for the South to impose slavery on the 
North ; for the want of sectional preponderance. As at the forma- 
tion of the Constitution, the thirteen States were balanced upon 
Mason and Dixon's line, so that a controlling power was impossible 
to either section, so are the thirty-one States now balanced as equally 
upon the actual line which separates the free and slaveholding States. 
Granting the free States the advantage in numbers, in theh- homo- 
geneous population, and in the vigor and activity of all classes of the 
people, the balance of the slaveholding States is found in their 
command of the great rivers of the West, and in their possession of 
the great staple of northern manufactures. So nearly equal are 
the two sections, that any absolute and decisive preponderance of 
the North is impossible. Even if the Senate were constituted on 
the same principles as the House of Eepresentatives, and thereby 
a majority of both houses could be secured, how certain it is that no 
law of regulation or abolition could or would be enforced against the 
will and opposition of the South ! If the United States had at this 
moment constitutional authority in the premises, it would be impos- 
sible to exercise it, from relative weight, from sectional equilibrium. 
Like two nations, substantially equal, their alternative would be, un- 
availing strife, or the agreement to differ. In truth, whether enfo'rced 
or unenforced, legislation would end in establishing that which it 
began to remove. 

Such being our views of the necessary results of sectional equili- 
brium, we do not accept the common explanation of the allowance 
and progress of slavery hitherto, as by compromises between the 
North and the South, or still worse, by southern domination and 
northern subserviency. As it was not determinate action, but 
necessary inaction, which ruled in the allowance of slavery by the 
Constitution, so it was in fixing the sectional line of 36. 30., and in 
the "treaty" with Texas. So inevitable was inaction from the 
previous equilibrium of forces, that if the North had prevailed in 
either case, by some advantage of the moment, most surely it would 



G5 

not have prevailed. No sectional vote, according to northern views, 
could have been carried out and enforced against the South. Equi- 
librium could not have given a final and settled preponderance. 
The maintenance of slavery at the South and its extension to the 
southern West, has been due, not to voluntary compromise between 
the North and South, but to the impossibility of turning an even- 
balanced scale ; not to neglect or consent on the part of the North, 
but to necessary inaction ; not to northern weight thrown into the 
scale, but to southern weight itself keeping the balance even ; not 
to an overruling South, but to equal impotence of both North and 
South against each other; not, in fine, to southern domination and 
northern subserviency, but to that relative weight which gives no 
occasion for either. 

We do not forget the claim that there should then be no United 
States at all ; that the North should separate from the South, in 
order not to be partaker of other men's sins. Not to dwell upon 
the assumption of the last chapter, that this is not left to our choice, 
— that the union ordained by the will of Providence cannot be 
broken by the will of man, — we may confidently assert that if we 
had the power to separate any member from the body, or to divide 
the body into two living parts, then there is no conceivable reason 
for doing so. What if we are so equally balanced that the North 
cannot control the South, nor the South the North ? What if we 
cannot decree and enforce, the one section against the will and 
opposition of the other, and thereby each is left to its own choice 
and responsibility in matters local and sectional ? May we then 
form no partnership in any thing, because we cannot become part- 
ners in every thing? May we maintain no relations with men, 
unless they can be ruled by us in all relations ? May government 
be common for no purposes without being common for all purposes ? 
In fine, may not the northern and southern sections, though incapa- 
ble of ruling each other on the great sectional question, still sail on 
the same oceans, gulfs, bays, and rivers ; under the protection of the 
same forts and fleets ; and in the same relations to our own separate 
States and to other nations, by which the common opportunities are 
preserved and the common thoroughfares of the world kept open ? 

Is there, then, no scope at the South for northern philanthropy ? 
Undoubtedly there is ; none the less because it must needs be with- 
out authority, where no authority exists, and without a decisive 



66 

weight where an overruling Providence has made the balances even. 
Authority disclaimed, impotence to overrule acknowledged, and the 
vain struggle of equal sections finished, there will be the freest 
scope to whatever northern wisdom and good will. With authority 
we could do nothing, because we form but an equal section of the 
Union. Without authority, without power, as ready to check our 
mistaken earnestness as to rouse the mistaken apathy of our breth- 
ren ; as ready to learn as to teach, we shall find the whole South 
open to those fraternal councils from which priceless blessings may 
be hoped. 

Of this hope we have a striking illustration. No doubt any 
attempt on the part of the North to regulate the cultivation of cot- 
ton by a sectional vote, would have failed, if there had been author- 
ity, for the want of northern weight adequate to overrule the reluc- 
tance and resistance which the interference would have called forth. 
Nevertheless the weight of the South was no hinderance to northern 
ingenuity and industry. The necessity of leaving the care of cotton 
to the cotton -growing States, allowed yet fullest scope to northern 
invention and manufactures, as great elements of southern prosperi- 
ty. Who can tell how many times the wealth of the South has 
been multiplied by the cotton-gin of Whitney, by the looms and 
the labors of scores of Lowells and Manchesters. Let it not be 
supposed, in regard to the more important matter of their social 
condition, to the great principles of moral and political economy, 
that wise and kind reflection and suggestion will be lost upon the 
South, if in any degree they shall be found emanating from the 
North. 



67 



CHAPTER XI. 

ADVANTAGES OF STATE SUPREMACY. 

There cannot be a stronger appeal to the South than the claim 
that, whether bj authority or power, by inherited rights or sectional 
equilibrium, the responsibility is theirs alone. If the North desires 
to see a remedy for slavery, let it disclaim all intention, let it dis- 
card all attempt to overrule, acknowledging its own utter impotence, 
and ceasing the vain struggle of equal sections. Instead of light- 
ening the sense of responsibility by officious interference, let the 
whole weight of it be left where it properly belongs, assured that 
the way will be more open to whatever neighborly and philanthropic 
aids. In the hope that our suggestions will be as well received as 
they are well meant, we proceed to note certain direct advantages 
of our system of State Administration. 

1. The slaveholding States, alone, are competent to the specific 
wisdom and skill inquired. They, only, can form and apply a Code 
truly remedial. 

It were to deny the principle on which this work proceeds, to 
assert that wisdom and skill cannot come from without. But no one 
can feel more sensibly than the writer, that all suggestions from the 
North must be made with deference to the local knowledge and ex- 
perience of the South. Whatever wisdom may be supposed to be 
derived from the whole experience of mankind and the history of 
races rising in the social state ; or from American experiments with 
barbarism, and the European problem of the " masses," it can be 
only in the seed, and not in the harvest, until it has been cultivated 
and ripened on southern soil. Those, only, who are intimate with 
the character and condition of the people, and with the climate and 
productions of the South, are capable of developing completely the 
principles of well-being, in application to masters and slaves — to 
the whole southern population. 



68 

Besides, how vain were all wisdom, all devices and methods from 
■without, except by cooperation from within, except with aid and 
scope given on the spot. If the northern philanthropist could prof- 
fer the maturity and the fulness of wisdom, he can do nothing unless 
the southern patriarch adopt and employ it. The wisdom of the 
cotton-gin would have been useless, if it had not been welcomed 
and applied by the growers of cotton. 

It is well, further, that the responsibility is not even sectional ; thafc 
the southern section cannot legislate for the southern section as a 
whole ; that each State is separately responsible. Now, any experi- 
ment must needs be tried on a small scale, with the opportunity of va- 
rying as occasion may require, until it can be made a fit model for the 
rest ; until, commending itself to the common sense and observation 
of men, it shall claim to be adopted by all. It is well, especially, 
that the responsibility is not national, and committed to divided 
councils, incapable of any other action but interminable contention ; 
nay, that it is not committed to a central power, capable of delaying 
or preventing desirable measures on the one hand, or of forcing 
those that are undesirable, on the other; or even of carrying with 
over haste, methods which are practicable only by slow degrees, 
instead of limited and local experiments, growing at length into a 
wisdom and skill fitted for the widest adoption. 

What we mean here, may be illustrated by a reference to the 
West Indies — to the changes produced there by a sovereign au- 
thority over, and not with them ; a legislation for them, and not by 
them ; without local knowledge and experience, and against the good 
will of the property and influence of the country, and yet of uni- 
versal effect. The first law — that of apprenticeship, was itself de- 
clared over hasty, injudicious, by the subsequent act of emancipa- 
tion, while that act done and finished, for better or worse, is rather 
claimed as good a priori, from abstract principles, than by the 
experiment itself; nay, is acknowledged or feared as a failure, by 
those even who aided and hailed the enactment. How disastrous 
the forced result may prove, is thus expressed in the London Times, 
April 30, 1849 : " With a race of blacks, new to the enjoyments, 
and unschooled by the discipline of freedom, it may yet be our fate 
to see the hopes of benevolent, and the enthusiasm of religious men, 
destroyed by the hideous spectacle of a new and more barbarous 
St. Domingo rising on the ruins of the British Antilles." In illus- 



69 

tration. if it be not proof, of the downward tendency of the actual 
emancipation of the British West Indies, we have the statements 
from Jamaira. that "the poverty and industrial prostration of that 
island, are almost incredible. Since 1832, out of the six hundred 
and filty-three sugar estates then in cultivation, more than one hun- 
dred and tifty have been abandoned, and tlie works broken up. This 
has thrown out of cultivation over 2()(»,0()0 acres of land, which in 
1832 gave employment to about 30,()()0 laborers, and yielded over 
15.000 liogshends of sugar, and over 6,000 puncheons of rum. 
Durinji the same period, over five hundred Coffee plantations have 
been abandoned, and their works broken up. This threw out of 
cultivation ovt'r 200,(iOO acres more of land, which in 1832, required 
the labor of over 30,000." Whether these statements be worthy of 
credit or not, they serve our present purpose of illustrating what 
we mean by over hasty and injurious legislation, from without, 
against local knowledge, and the good will of the property and influ- 
ence of the Slave States themselves. 

2. The wisdom of a single State has every opportunity to be ex- 
tended to other States, with such variations as the peculiar condition 
of each may require. If the separation of the States gives the fairest 
field lor a safe, unex})ensive, and advantageous experiment, their 
mutual intercourse affords the freest possible scope for its repetition, 
for its adoption according to its tried and proved merits, as wide as 
the evil to be remedied. It is well tliat each State only has the 
power within itself to devise and to attempt, to vary and to modify, 
to begin in its weakness and ignorance, and to grow in wisdom and 
skill by well-meant endeavors, until, by the aid of Him who enables 
the simple-hearted, it may be found accompHshing the work — and 
then it is well that the way is open for the example to be followed 
by other States in like condition. Tiie narrowness of the sover- 
eignty, incompetence everywhere, save within each slaveholding 
State, gives the best opportunity for the beginning, and the intimate 
union ot the States for the wide and rapid extension of a wise and 
successful experiment. Happy, in so great a matter as changing 
the whole condition of society, that no central authority can act 
upon the great Section concerned — can make an immediate and uni- 
versal change. Happy, if there may be found one or more among the 
States competent and concerned, so truly patriarchal as to undertake 
a method of well-being suited to the peculiar case ; to begin on the 



70 

plainest principles of common sense, and to grow in wisdom and 
skill until it shall become a fit model for the rest. Of the advan- 
tage thus stated, we find ample illustration in the general history of 
human progress, and in the annals of our own nation in particular. 

The mechanical and industrial improvements of the age were not 
over hastily undertaken — were not absolutely hindered by central 
sovereignties, but grew up from individual devices and experiments, 
until they had attained a perfection in which they could become the 
helpers as well as the foster children of many nations. Had they 
depended upon the Parliament of Great Britain or the Congress of 
the United States, or still more upon tlie united councils of all civ- 
ilized nations which have adopted them, they would not have been 
so wisely made, or so rapidly and so universally introduced It was 
the smallness of the sphere, rather, which enabled successful exper- 
iment ; and when successful experiment was made, it was intimate 
connection of the parts of a country with each other, and of country 
with country, which facilitated their ready and general adoption. 
An experimental Watt, proffering his improvements to the parties 
concerned for a moiety of the savings above the use of Newcomen's 
steam engine, brought a " remedy " to all the coal mines of Great 
Britain ; concurring with an experimental Arkwright and Whitney, 
"reformed" all the cotton fields of the South, all the spinning 
wheels and looms of Europe and America ; and with an experi- 
mental Fulton on a single river of a single State in the New 
World, " emancipated " navigation from the chains of wind and tide, 
almost in every sea, and lake, and river of the globe. 

This last illustration introduces us to the peculiar advantages of 
our own system, depending as it did, for its first impulse and scope, 
upon the questionable patronage of a single State. The State of 
New York, in the use of a power finally decided not to be hers, 
gave steam navigation to the United States and to mankind. If the 
final interpretation of the Constitution by the Courts of the Union 
had been given at the first moment of experiment and uncertainty, 
it would have hindered instead of advancing ; it might have 
destroyed instead of sustaining, the great undertaking which, besides 
opening the wide world of waters to regular and rapid communica- 
tion among men, has also shortened by three fourths, the great 
thoroughfares by land, through our own States, and almost through- 
out the world. 



71 

The same State of New York, in the use of her unquestionable 
powers, has given another illustrious example. "Without authority 
over any other State, without power — simply by acting for herself, 
and proving for herself, and thus showing what was good for others, 
she has led the whole sisterhood in her train. Not by authority 
over the Union, but without authority ; not by centralization of the 
States, but by subdivision into separate sovereignties, has been pro- 
duced a system of internal improvements extending over all the 
States ; and this work of many as one, is due to the enterprise and 
success of the single State of New York, in undertaking and carry- 
ing through, the Erie Canal ; becoming thus, in the best sense, the 
Empire State, ruling by not ruling, becoming by example and influ- 
ence alone, the welcomed Sovereign of the whole. A single State, 
in the use of its own inherited and acknowledged powers, experi- 
menting upon its own facilities and resources, with great misgivings, 
devised, attempted, modified, perfected, the first great work of Inter- 
nal improvement ; and behold other States have followed her exam- 
ple, until all are bound together by Canals and Railroads, doing the 
work of each separate State for its own behoof, and yet binding all 
into an indissoluble one ; all becoming more firmly united by being 
so distinctly divided ; a more perfect one because they were many. 

This capacity in a State, not to rule many States, a whole section, 
or the whole Union, but to influence by a worthy example, has illus- 
tration in our earlier annals ; in the rise and progress of the sepa- 
rate States and of the Union, which at length became established 
and completed. The whole course of events shows the advantage 
to the whole of separate Sovereignty in the parts. For its own all- 
important purposes, we honor and value the United Sovereignty 
which God has given us ; but in so far as we desire either a sectional 
or general result in regard to purposes belonging to the separate 
States, we accept rather the opportunity and the scope for injluence 
which has prevailed so often, and wrought out the needful advan- 
tage. By the influence of State upon State, we have become 
what we are. From the beginning it has been each separate 
State, experimenting unconsciously for other States, which has led 
forward our deliverances and our blessings. In the wars with the 
savage tribes, and their European abettors and leaders, and with the 
mother country, and in the rise and progress of our separate and 
united powers, up to the Constitution itself; advantages have grown 



72 

by means of our separate Sovereignties ; State example and influ- 
ence, prompting, directing, and uniting different Sections, and the 
whole. A few examples will suffice. 

It was, then, by this influence of State upon State, that the Rev- 
olution of 1688 was carried through the American Colonies. In 
the acknowledgment of William and Mary, and the establishment 
of the " Bill of Rights," says the historian Bancroft, " a popular 
insurrection beginning at Boston, extended to the Chesapeake and the 
wilderness." The idea of an American Congress succeeded natu- 
rally thereupon. "Invitations were given by letter from the Gen- 
eral Court of Massachusetts, and extended to all the Colonies, as 
far at least as Maryland, Massachusetts, the parent of so many 
States, is certainly the parent of the American Union," born in truth 
of the influence of State upon State, on the first day of May, 1690, 
when "Congress" met at New York. That great change in the 
future of all the States — in their prospective unity as an English 
people, with the first principles of the British Constitution, strength- 
ening State Governments, and uniting them for the common good 
— the capture of Louisburg by Gov. Shirley in the year 1745, wa3 
due to the action of Massachusetts — to the influence of Massachu- 
setts upon the sisterhood of Colonies. " The Legislature of Massa- 
chusetts, after some hesitation, resolved on the expedition by a ma- 
jority of a single vote. New York and Pennsylvania sent a small 
supply of artillery and provisions. New England alone furnished 
men." 

The grand coalition (for so it may be called,) which delivered the 
British Colonies forever from " the French and Indians," — which 
developed them into (almost) independent States, while it combined 
them (almost) into a Sovereign Unity, was due to the action of Vir- 
ginia in sending Major Washington " to insist on the evacuation of 
the French Posts on the Ohio," and in their raising troops to assert 
their rights ; inspiring thus all the Colonies with a sense of their 
separate powers, and of the necessity and advantage of Union, and 
giving rise to the quasi Union at Albany in 1754. The influence 
of Virginia through a long course of exertions and deliverances, 
brought the French war to a prosperous conclusion, and established 
the British race and influence in North America ; to grow how soon, 
and how flourishing, into the United States ! The resolutions of 
Patrick Henry in the Legislature of Virginia — the circular letter 



73 

of Massachusetts proposing to call a central Congress, produced the 
meeting of nine Colonies at New York, with the concurrence of the 
rest, on the 2d Tuesday of October, 17G5. The proposition of Mas- 
sachusetts during the exile of its Legislature to Salem, for a Conti- 
nental Congress, by its influence, produced the General Congress 
of September, 1774, and the Declaration of Rights, claiming all 
the privileges of British subjects for the American States ; and, in 
truth, the Declaration of Independence itself, July 4, 1776, and its 
effective and triumphant accomplishment. And finally, the propo- 
sition of Virginia for the Convention of 1787, influenced all the 
States to join in forming the Constitution, which, in essence, the 
course of events had wrought out — in completing and crowning the 
work which had grown so long by the interaction of the States upon 
one another, in the perfect unity of separated Sovereignties, indis- 
solubly one, and yet capable of indefinite increase. 

This history of the influence of State upon State must not be dis- 
missed without referring also to the individual influence which is at 
the same time exemplified for the encouragement of the philanthro- 
pist and patriarch. Each State movement was but the movement, 
extended and multiplied, of patriotic individuals, acting with the 
Providence, and aided by the Providence, which has been with 
these States for good. Especially may the crowning work, the 
adoption of the Constitution, and its favorable operation, be ascribed 
not to the central authority or power of either the Congress or Con- 
vention of 1787 ; but in how great a degree to the influence of 
Washington, and other leading patriots, in forming the Constitution ; 
and then to the illustrious three who united in defending and com- 
mending the instrument, in forming which two of them had part. 
The essays of Puhlius! who can tell their influence in securing the 
adoption of the Constitution, and its favorable operation for more 
than three score years ? The numbers of the Federalist, the joint 
work of Jay, Hamilton, and Madison ; without authority, without 
power — ruled without ruling — still rule, and will not cease to rule 
the American States. 

It is not authority, then, nor power of the whole over the parts, 
nor overruling force, nor the weight of Section against Section, to 
which we are taught to look, for whatever, through this wide domain 
it is desirable to accomphsh, but to influence, which any Stale may 
exert upon many States ; nay, any individual, if indeed he may find 
7 



74 

anJ bring forth wisdom for the people. The whole voice of Amer- 
ican history demands that each separate State, or any portion of the 
States, shall be strong over the rest by influence alone. Northern 
philanthropy will do its utmost — not by authority where no author- 
ity exists — not by power where there is no power — not by an im- 
perative balance where there is an essential equipoise ; but without 
authority and power, and notwithstanding impotence, whenever it 
shall unite an available wisdom to fraternal good-will. 

It is thus w ith moral as with physical forces. "VVe take account of 
vis inertiae as well as vis: of impotence as well as power, whether 
that power may not contend idly against its bounds, or that it may be 
accumulated and applied — of the mountain sides, up which the river 
cannot run, as well as of its natural flow — of the banks which protect 
the valley, as well as of the stream which waters it and bears it3 
products on its bosom — of the rocky barriers which hold back 
internal oceans, and preserve half a continent from the flood of 
waters, as well as of the tremendous torrent. Nay, instead of con- 
tending with a vis inertice which we cannot annul, we make a 
new power out of impotence itself. The attempt to send the 
current up the mountain side would be in vain ; the rocky barrier 
removed, there would be only desolation and ruin ; but the dyke 
rightly interposed, and behold the river fertihzes the country, or 
does the labor of thousands of men. What if there be impotence 
in the United States, which forbids their action ? Out of that very 
impotence may come the most effectual strength. Who shall tell us 
that when the impotence is acknowledged, it will not itself prove 
the very reservoir of power ? that when we shall have left off the 
vain attempt to make the waters run up the hill, we may not find a 
method of raising and directing the fertilizing and working floods ? 
Out of the United States " cannot," against which we have wrought 
and struggled in vain, what a "can" might grow, working wonders 
of blessing for the North and the South. 



75 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE COMMON TERRITORIES AND FREE SOIL. 

What are the rights and duties of the United States, as to the 
common territories ? Ought they to claim them ? — Can they se- 
cure them by a sectional vote as free soil, as excluding slavery 
forever? In answering these questions, we assert, j'zrs^, the right of 
the South to carry their property and labor, in the forms existing in 
the progress and establishment of our political Union, into their 
fair proportion of whatever territory is, or may be, the common prop- 
erty of all. 

Of course we mean their political right ; their right relatively to 
the United States ; their right of doing, as opposed to our right of 
hindering, independently of the moral question, in regard to which 
they are responsible to God and not to the United States. Political- 
ly, relatively, so far as our right of control is concerned, the slave 
states have the right, not only to retain slavery if they will, but to 
carry it, as it was at the time of the completed union, into their 
equitable proportion of any territory we may hold in common ; and 
those States must be held accountable if they take advantage of a 
political right to perpetuate a moral wrong. But whatever wrong 
they may choose to commit within the old and settled prescrip- 
tion, we (the United States) have no political right to forbid or 
prevent. 

The right thus stated, is plain on the general principles of part- 
nership. The rights of partnership extend to all property held or 
acquired in common, and do not leave the question of individual 
application and use to be judged and settled according to the con- 
science or will of the stronger party. If in a mercantile partner- 
ship of three, one of the parties were found disposed to invest his 
share of the profits in the slave trade itself, the other two would 
have no right to withhold his dividend. Their only course would be 



76 



to pay over to their erring brother his own, and then, as individu- 
als, to do what might belong to them as individuals, in dissuading 
him from the error. In our political partnership we have an 
instance in point. The surplus revenue was property in common, 
and as such, belonged equally to all the States. Did any one 
ever dream that the surplus revenue was liable to be withheld from 
the South, except on the condition that none of it should be employed 
in the purchase of slaves ? or even in that crying abomination, 
the purchase of families torn asunder ? What if the distribution of 
the surplus revenue to the South might enable the purchase of 
thousands of slaves in the worst form of the traffic, had the United 
States any right to withhold the southern dividend ? 

What is plain in a mercantile partnership, what is plain in the 
partnership of the States as to funds in common, is not less plain as 
to territory in common. In the absence of any specific provision, 
the principle would hold, that being possessed or acquired in eem- 
mon, it would be to be used in common, according to the custom of 
the partners at the time of the compact, and continued until now. 
If it be said that the acquisition of territorial property was not con- 
templated in the rise and settlement of the Union, — in tlie articles 
of partnership, — it may be replied with equal truth, neither was a 
surplus revenue contemplated ; but want of foresight did not change 
the principles on which the common funds were to be distributed — 
did not give the right of control or appropriation to the free States 
— does not give the right of control or appropriation of territory 
any more than of funds. In either case, also, how plain it is that 
if the emergency had been foreseen it would have been especially 
provided for. The presumption that a guaranty of rights in partner- 
ship would have been required if the claims had been foreseen, sets 
aside those claims from all place in the idea of the original contract. 

Besides this plain application of general principles, tiiere is not 
wanting the allowance of the right in question by the Constitution 
itself; as it seems to us expressed, but most certainly implied. The 
requirement of the Constitution, " that nothing in it shall be so con- 
strued as to prejudice any claims of the United States or any par- 
ticular State," must, from its very terms, be applicable to territorial 
as well as other possessions ; to surplus lands as well as surplus 
revenues. How much stronger, then, is the allowance of State 
claims according to the settled usao;es of the States when the Con- 



78 

Cl abolish slavery in the States, so impotent are we to prevent its 
removal to the southern " West." If we had the right as partners 

— if we had the constitutional authority, we have not the decisive 
power. The great Overruler has so overruled that we cannot rule 

— has so evenly balanced us that we cannot turn the scale. 

No doubt this assertion, this indispensable admission, may be 
unpalatable, if indeed we wish to overrule; no doubt it may be 
questioned, because it is unpalatable. But is not the admission 
indispensable ? It may seem easy, at first thought, to make out a 
case in ftivor of the North, strong in its homogeneous and active 
population, its majorities attained in the house of representatives, 
and at length in the senate also, and we may over-hastily say we 
can:— the northern section has such preponderance that it can 
enforce a sectional law excluding the South from territories other- 
wise open ; i. e. with slavery as existing at the formation of the 
Constitution. 

Let it be supposed, then, that there are territories otherwise open 
to slavery, and that we carry our northern will against the will of the 
South ; that the grand question absorbing all other questions, is at 
length decided according to the will of the North, and that FREE 
SOIL is decreed for all present and future territory. Will any 
man think that the question would thereby be decided ? — that that 
decree could stand ? Would the question be settled forever by that 
minute majority which alone it is possible to suppose ? — by that 
minute preponderance which turned the scale ? What if there be a 
majority in the house?— what if there has come to be a majority 
in the senate also, and the equilibrium hitherto preserved be 
technically destroyed? — does that prevent the substantial equili- 
brium which the great Overruler has put beyond and above the 
decrees of man ? Does that prevent the equipoise still secured by 
compounded if not simple " ratios ? " Does that destroy the weight 
which the South possesses in its numbers and advantages united ? 
In that substantial equilibrium which Providence has "settled, can 
there be found a settled and decisive preponderance ? Will not, 
must not such a vote as we have supposed be speedily reversed, or 
become a dead letter by being unenforced ? — still showing in the 
future that equilibrium cannot overbalance. 

^ But suppose the attempt to enforce as earnest, as determined, as 
rigid as to enact the sectional law ; while yet the South would not 



79 

obey the law without enforcement. How long would the North 
persist against the South ? How long carry on the almost equal 
struggle, before it would learn the lesson of equal forces on which 
we now insist ? Or, if the North should persist, determinedly, vio- 
lently, at the point of the sword, to carry a measure which God has 
given thera no right or power to carry, how long before the South, 
almost if not quite equal to the North, would be reduced to that 
quiet submission which would settle the question ? — how long before 
they would become dependants instead of partners, — subject States 
instead of coequal sovereignties, — before sectional preponderance 
would take the place of sectional equilibrium ? Rather, how long 
would it be before the wisdom demanded by the actual equilibrium 
(not compromise, but conformity to an overruling Providence) 
would rise, and tlose the useless, baneful strife ? 

Assuredly, no decree of the United States can be permanent, 
which is absolutely sectional, — which is made by a casual prepon- 
derance, where, in the main, the balances are even. The abolition 
of the slave trade in 1808, was not carried against the South and 
over the South, but with and for the South, and therefore it has 
been permanent and abiding. 

This impossibility of decisive action of Section against Section, 
is no doubt as applicable to any attempts of the Soutli against the 
North, as of the North against the South. If the North has to 
learn that it cannot work its sectional will against the unalterable 
principles of equipoise, so also has the South. The rendition of 
fugitive slaves was settled by the Constitution, thus far by the con- 
sent of the North, that those " held to labor " should not be " dis- 
charged," but " delivered up on the claim of the party to whom 
labor might be due," and no doubt this settlement may remain 
fixed, so long as the South shall insist only on the delivery, on 
proof, before and by the proper authorities. But suppose the South 
to require more, — action without proof — " delivery " before deci- 
sion that " service and labor were due," and the cooperation of citi- 
zens, under severe penalties, against the general will and feeling of 
the North ; can such a sectional law be enforced ? Can it be other 
than a dead letter, or the occasion of baneful, endless contention for 
the want of any sufficient southern preponderance ? 

What, then, it may be asked, is to be the issue, as it regards 
southern institutions and all the interests of property connected 



80 

therewith ? Is mere equipoise to be as fatal as northern prepon- 
derance ? Is southern " property " to become worthless -by southern 
impotence, in the even-balanced scale ? By no means : impo- 
tence acknowledged, new powers may arise out of that very impo- 
tence itself. There is a better " cordon " by which slave property 
may be at once retained and enhanced, than any Fugitive Slave 
law, — needing no posse comitatus, no fines, imprisonments, or blood. 
There is a method, dimly seen in the confusion of the times, in 
which the North and the South may earnestly concur — a Reme- 
dial Code, — an ameliorated slavery, under which those " held to 
labor *' shall not wish to escape, and the northern philanthropist 
shall have no wish to tempt or aid ; making the " cordon " of 
comfortable livelihood, unbroken families, and happy homes. The 
time may come when the " being held to service " shall be considered 
well compensated by the rations and privileges which are its proper 
counterpart ; when free blacks themselves will desire the position 
of slaves rather than freemen. So long as their condition must be 
servile and dependent, the well-endowed slave will not think him- 
self below but above the ill-provided freeman. 

3. An absolute free soil is not the desideratum for southwestern 
territory ; i. e., for Africans in the actual southern proportions to 
the European race. Without political right, without decisive and 
overruhng power, we could not establish an absolute free soil if we 
would. What we now assert is, we would not if we could. 

This assertion is not made against but for the African race ; not 
to prevent, but to secure their well-being. We have not claimed 
free soil for the slave States themselves, and we cannot, therefore, 
for any territories whose ratio of races is to be the same. No 
doubt the claim of the African race to the " pursuit of happiness " 
is equal to that of the European ; but in so far as that claim is on 
us, it is that we should help and not hinder that pursuit. In so far 
as depends on us, they are not to be endowed with " too free a free- 
dom," lest they be thereby " less free," and some of their present 
bonds are to be retained, if they may thereby be " more free." 

Free Soil, indeed ! The two races belting the continent from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific, all States and all territories in their 
present actual Southern proportions ; the European, with all the 
advantages of skill and capital, and crowding labor, too ; the Afri- 
can advanced, indeed, but how little, comparatively, beyond the 



81 

barbarism of hii« fathers and his cotemporaries in Africa ; without 
skill, and enterfjrise, and energy, and capital, and amidst the crowd- 
ing laborers of Europe — will any law of free soil make free soil to 
the African race ? Will it assure the protection and direction of 
capital in aid of African labor, or of African labor in aid of capi- 
tal? May it not hinder and obstruct, in place of helping the pur- 
suit of happiness ? If by free soil be intended an American or 
even a Briti.-h freedom ; the whole history and condition of the Afri- 
can race, their aboriginal barbarism, and their present state and 
relations, may be supposed to cry out against it. Bonds are need- 
ful to make free. Let all good bonds be retained, whether on the 
slave or the master ; let bad bonds only be loosed. No matter for 
the name. Free soil, in name, cannot make the thing, the substance, 
the reality. Slavery, with its bad bonds loosed, its good bonds 
retained, cannot prevent the well-being of the race. No matter for 
the name. Let it be slavery ameliorated, or freedom restricted up 
to the truest well-being of capital and labor, of European and Afri- 
can, and then the two races may flow together in their southern 
proportions, over the southern " West," with equal opportunity for 
the " pursuit of happiness." 

This claim for an ameliorated slavery, or a restricted freedom in 
the Territories, proceeds on the supposition that the demand for free 
soil is indeed in behalf of the African race, and not against them ; 
that it is not the ban of exclusion from the climates and employ- 
ments to which their long settlement in the New World has given 
them a title. But is it so? or do the advocates of free soil intend 
the boon for the European alone, to the exclusion of the African ? 
Is it in truth intended to admit the negro in southern proportions, 
with the full franchises of the North ? And does this united cry 
prove its sincerity, by the readiness of the States from which it 
comes to make their own soil free ? Or is there a common and 
universal consent, that in the States, free soil in southern ratios 
cannot, must not be admitted? What answer is made by the free 
States themselves, amidst their loudest cries, their most determined 
action lor free soil ? Are they ready to receive a free African pop- 
ulation, in the proportion of one third or one half, to an equal share 
of social, civil, and political rights? Is New York? Is Pennsylva- 
nia? Is Ohio? Indiana? Illinois? Michigan? Are they ready 
to share their several States with the African race in southern 



82 

proportions? If the question were now before their own legisla- 
tures, of making these States free soil, would they open their doors 
gladly il>r one third or one half of their present population to go 
out, and for an equal number of the African race to come in as fel- 
low citizens and voters, as " the sovereign people " equally with 
themselves? On the other hand who does not know, that if there 
were such a population ready to rush in, laws would be histantly 
made to check the immigration, and to limit the freeilom of the 
immigrants? Massachusetts herself, with her full African fran- 
chise, her free soil for her eight thousand of African blood, — would 
she be "free soil" if the prospect were that in ten years one third or 
one half of her population would be free negroes, having, like the 
one hundredth now, their equal share in giving direction to her 
whole condition ; to her industry, and education, and morals, and 
religion ? "Would Massachusetts be free soil with this prospect 
before her? Would her legislature be agreed in continuing and 
establishing free soil. And if the question before Congress could 
involve ihe destinies of Massachusetts, and were about to introduce 
into her bosom the southern profiortion of the African race, making 
one third, or one half, instead of one hundredth, would lier course 
in Congress still be as hitherto ? Would her delegation vote for 
an absolute free soil ? Would her legislature so instruct and advise 
her representatives and senators ? 

In truth, whatever lapse of sound judgment there may be in the 
heat of controversy, and in regard to others and the distant, it may 
be asserted as the sense of the country, — of the >'orth as well as 
the South, — that the African race, iidieriting barbarism, and but 
partially civilized; comparatively without ca[)ital and skill, and not 
homogeneous with the leading race, would not, in large prtiportions, 
promote the prosperity of a State, or even of themselves, as coequal 
citizens ; that both for their own gnod and tlie good of the whole 
people, they need to be legislated for, mther than to be co-legisla- 
tors. The sense of the North itself is against five soil. The sense 
of Massachusetts is against free soil. "We do not complain at the 
reluctance of the North to a large fi-ee African population. — to 
that sense of the necessities of the case which has ruhd hitherto, 
and would rule with still more vigilance in view of any large in- 
crease. All that we require is, that all restriction shall wi.-ely seek 
the well-being of both classes of the people, and that thtre shall be 



soil : Cl>!«J it .^iwUl hft Crtn\j[)«n'arift,. smi; uwjpilttiwl f^ dm ^py^nml :*«w« 

privil?;5e rtt* opprmwuon, but ak iiu» Ikiiutk aum'-t \\rum — rh« taiiu* 
mftthoii of IviH weil^hinug, 

Thi» point*,, whetlwr of anu»lior.'Ui»)ii or I'fytG'uinon, (mnnot now !« 
mdiiy»ti*d. Kiiepinj? ia view rJ»i» ;p*m»rai iitea* of '' snrni bnnil» m- 
tainei ami bad bomis looBeii," tU*t way i« op»»ii fiir nortJj«i'n phiiun^ 
thropiKtei anii sontluix'a parinartilut U\ imuit iu the hjgii woi'k- of pm- 
mnring the wdl-bein^r of botlv cJiiHSMs* aiui of rhe wiioie peoplR. 
Inati^ati of excluding che Afi'iiians of tiie South hmxn die wurJiwa 
** West," hemming them witliin Uieii? pi'KSJtnt bouniittriejt,- thr feae 
of them aa tree eitiaens on. the one hitniiy on (ft-eadi of Aiuvery an 
it ia on the otlier ; let pao-iardia and; piuliimiiropiHia iiuyiire 
whether there are not prineipli*a of justiee and. merny, ini wliiult 
the ^JTorth and the South aan agree ; wheriier * Terrirorial Corn*- 
miaaion, composed of die sages and paci-iota of both seRtionR^. migiiti 
not unite with reference fr> any ^louUiern. territory, iiv miiawire* of 
aiivanr.age to botk racea and ro riie wiioie (usuntarjr ; miglit not *pefid 
the natural ffow of both races inm the ^'eat ai^atluirn * West,."' wirit 
only thia condition, tiat it ** shall carry no eiemeur* of ouHiwy 
which, a wiae benevolence 'iau cast otfv' and all eiiinumcaof welL- 
being which, a wiae biiac^aJence caa i^arry. 

Whatever might be che ipeciiic wocic of ".such. * ComnuBfticiui. tfia 
United States would have the same opportunity of iutUience whick 
we have suggested with, reterence to aa eaperiment by any Stacev 
with, some advantages*. The vain striife of equal secloDnft laid aaide^ 
and the aages and patriota <d bntJi .sef^tions anited in the simpie 
attempt to aid the •* pucsTiit of happiness " by botlt races* aceoriL- 
ing to their several conditions and ch:iracEer,. a geaerai weicnme 
would be prepared for any weH-cried and wel-proved meiJiuii. anil 
that method might be aideti and hastened by the iiheraiiry of ch* 
United States. If the ameiioracioiia proposeil should be diought fltt 
the disadvantage of the slaveholders^ che United States ace compe^ 
tffioi; to give donationa in lami w those who may adopt idieir propo- 
^Ta ia regard ta an. ejE^erimental Derritory. Who siiull neil u» 
tftttf. when' the Nortk and the South. ^laA imiCe ia what they aam 
(ia, t:fa^<"- they will not then be ahht OO) da iduqIl ; chat out of angnS' 



84 

sibility of action section against section, there may not proceed 
action by agreement for the highest well-being of the African race, 
in and with the highest well-being of the whole people ? An experi- 
mental territory, encouraged by a " laud bounty," might be found 
the most prosperous of territories, if its only bonds upon master 
and servant were those which make " more free ; " might first 
relieve the South of any surplus African population, and then, re- 
acting on the sources from which it proceeded, might produce and 
secure the well-being of the sovereign States themselves, in the 
manner best suited to the condition and character of both classes 
of their people. 

I cannot close this chapter better than by referring to the oft- 
repeated phrase, prominent in the discussion of the territorial ques- 
tion, and assumed as deciding in favor of Free Soil, in the popular 
sense of that terra — " There is a higher law than the Constitution 
regulating our authority over the public domain." Undoubtedly 
there is. Nothing could be more false and fatal than the denial 
of the " higher law," if thereby be meant, that the laws of Heaven 
may be transgressed in obedience to the laws of earth ; that nations 
may rightfully do wrong, under their own special provisions for 
wrong-doing. True ! a thousand times true. There is a higher 
law than the Constitution. All honor to the senator who uttered 
and urged a principle so high and holy in the Senate of the United 
States. May it never be forgotten or disobeyed ! 

But with reference to the legislation to which it was applied by the 
distinguished senator, what if the higher law forbid, instead of com- 
manding it ? What if the great Overruler has given no political right 
to the United States, to legislate in the matter at all ; and has, besides, 
so evenly balanced them, section against section, that they could not 
use the right if it had been given ? "What if the higher law so ruled 
in the birth, growth, and union of these States, as to give certain 
rights to the separate States, and to withhold them from the United 
States ; and so ordered sectional arrangements as to produce a sub- 
stantial equilibrium between the North and the South, proved in every 
attempt to disturb the balance for more than sixty years ? Surely 
the higher law hitherto has restrained authority, forbidden power 
" over the domain ; " has set limits which could not be passed, 
leaving free scope only to whatever wisdom and good will. 

In like manner there is, undoubtedly, a higher law than the law 



85 

of nations. And yet that "higher law," instead of making every 
nation's duties the duties of every other nation, or the duties of the 
parts the common duties of the whole, is found to restrict authority 
and power to each one's appropriate domain, as the great Overruler 
has distributed them. Thus, the United States, France, Russia, 
have nothing to forbid and nothing to allow in regard to miserable 
Ireland ; nothing to do in its behalf, save only what no " law of 
nations," no " balance of power " can forbid or hinder, — the work 
of heavenly charity. 

And this work of heavenly charity, — free to every nation on the 
face of the earth, — is not restrained from any part of our beloved 
country, by any barriers which Heaven has ordained. There is free 
scope, notwithstanding ; nay, there is free scope, thereby, for the 
utmost wisdom and good will. True, there is a law higher than 
■the Constitution, ruling the Constitution itself, withholding as well 
as giving political rights, withholding as well as giving political 
power, forbidding sectional overruling as surely as beach and rock 
forbid the ocean to overrule the land, and as surely with kind 
and merciful intent. Do not tell us that a " higher law " requires 
the sea to go farther than to its appointed bars and doors, its 
" proud waves," not to be stayed, so that it may flood the world 
with good. Rather let the sea obey the law which restrains it, and 
remain shut up in its " decreed place," for then only shall it be the 
never-failing source of dew, and rain, and fountain, and river, and 
lake, for a blessing to all people and all times. 
8 



~ ' ir 1 -iniiiuiffg Biii juimny ;?f^Ki<m. 

jar £ 'rsmesatd laiDs tc^ -naast Tn&. jh ' .il 
niScnit X 
"^e Ml iFTw 1 11 I ]f nrwHiriiH su£ ■^rajm-fniT. ir :ac uoo:. .Bii£ 

i^Ti^ St 3e: "Ifftiinir :^ "TTrrmjiT^ WTfT aessiL frtiTw V-nyg- :r!ll£3. le 
*rig Ti5^ jc •»«««;»& -fi«°n -t^r-TtJ'^ftj - ant Tfl^yFnriT^ 





ii'.:i u-.Tua Hn£ "TTP?r "lie Tif^. 

Tmu 'Uli. ^"iTg OJHifc f^^?-^ 5i 



31 * 3ace IT sxiriiail ofnt^noairs. — -^ aaaess :ir 'iaOHc i-i 
sir^s ir irrrtsiin. . jdil Mm^ jcun. ^rti T3-^»»g aat j " 11111,1 -i. j}t 
"iiti Tq;I— MTmr jf j«tr- — ouc jess nr'-fle aar^ nan. :ait :bi^ee=:. nK 

jutir TJiia iir ly .-^itai. :^aiL ir ie :^mn«"iyg= tii mw~Tus. 
ITS jjutt lums -vTico. r?mtir» Ibt asKSif n ■ - 
osnennsxr m. nm ir iasr- osil^ mBmennv^. sr 

'juicr -w^wh. liiiBS an enucie tint n naiB? :iE? ^acsaat: JC' : 
ensciiic rammani j£ zae :»rriisi. taert 'sus »ssc& "*e "':3Eiui2i * 

labor. -^»>^ ±«?r mrr arrmat ir t^tc TW sa'^t m^r V - 

amrmsL * rie '3*?-ns: leit s ^aOarT juu. iuf w«ss«r-- 

scRt. ±e lena^ itjii xr imwrcam JiMr. are At fssma%» Mt-n^ 

Oirascanjirr «* rrsniir^i xr r«i»r«« «dik ait. jMiriftft' .asP* ««. 






88 

\ aeedlol to be retined here with x race not homogeDeous, and 
ninrisB, ndflleaee, xad impiOTidenee.* 
In retaBsiag tbe bonds to Yabar and ^wisioa, there must needs 
be a beateroleBt visdam. Tbe reJatkms <^ labor and provision must 
be care&illj defined, and the best interests of master and slave 
eqnaDj- secored. Wbatenra- bas been found to be the amount of 
to enable the mtastei to maintain tbe slave, and the 
md pnrikgeB to correspond, must be defined Tbe 
fwlirifid to tbe ose of tbeir capital, and to some due 
perrioan and directkm, as trulv as tbe capitalists 
of Ibe 'Sarihf hath Sar ^beafsAxts and that tbev maj be able to 
tanBoeh. to ihtR ^ves an availaUe labor. Tbe slaves are entitled to 
tmA xnSk as labor can permanentty seeore. ^ Tbe laborer is 
voKtfaj of bis Mre," and auigt and should be sastained bj his 



Aa to ^Mt anwant to be famished bj die emplojer, there has 
beat fixmd in tbe freest States no alm^te rule, and wages are 
UOaeaaeaSij k& to take ibeir natural coarse : falling vt ben tbej 
nn ao bi^ tbat esfotal k OMnpelled to withdraw employment, 
aad noBg vben prosperovK cai^iial y&^ks, to increase the number 
of ilB kboRTE. Und^r the system of slavoj, tbe rightful " hire " 
■UBt be for substance on the same principle, viz., toftai capital can 
Mf. Tbe amount of ** rations " and pri\-ileges must be such that 
Ae masters can fnrzuda tbem, instead of being compelled to cut 
iheaa tS altogether or in part ; and suc^ also, as to give fair 
eneovragemeot of their beirjg used to good and useful purposes. 

Whatever <Ah^T legislatkm may be needed in regard Uj capital , 
and labor, this at l»aist is required, viz., TTtat (Joe substitution of free 
f<ar dax^ labr/r tit/oR he diseoumtemmced and even disallowed. The 
free iobabitante d[ the slave States are not, of coarse, to be hindered 
fima hSjOT. Bat there must be no geo^ral adnd^ion rff immigrant 
labor, and if it threateaa large increase, it must be forbidden. Slave 
must be prattjeted- Thcee who assert that slaver}' it to be 
by eGbslitntii^ free laborers from Europe and A^^ia, know 
not vhat tiaej tscj. Graated that free labco- would be more profita- 
ble tbaa dare labor, and ibat tbs eatotstnticna <^ it would result in 
&e ytbmtarj emaneipatioii of die ebtTee, then must the State inter- 

• See CLapter TL 



■pcs^ and &B!fa^ -ft Hbar^g "viu^ wubH tAk "&£ hr^aJE. " '" t wi ibf 
mninx of one sLini or one na^ of is peoife:; "i&cL inRiir sv- ' y Yas. 
"fiie xxHc^ne m wiiiu. 'uu m^B^ TQe ^■hMbk —um not nw c^ 
powFer «> LiArtiniiii f^wngnmi knee n> ^^ Iok mi bmas? if ^s 
Sieves. TPiarfvsr fired ayt^vnxBSs ms^cxeinsc n- "tite inuaam s.* .^iiE 
for ** Afcicfc it AjasrestS if dipv aC' . 

Cta the a^ter iumd. Unr bus: he seenrsc tr in* •mawro-c -ethb 
th* sifiTfes. The TT^g»*yn<: -miwr bs^'? ^le mrin ir j^uui r t: iahar m 
ytjLir ' i. iar um? racrmg anc secnria^ virici sat be iPTi^-iQec tT" ianor 
akme. The *" inrt *" iut is "fnTir -aoac ihe i^ttorsr. if the ib»£- 
ter? Ttpwsrs hr^e nor heer Tnnnper}T- dsfinec anc nbesk-d imhessB. 
or i" ecsTME iae -nennroec athoses tc ihcae -wTwes. kc wha ig ^ HS . 
xeedf iL prpTTskntf he maae nr the fimrre ; "bnr iac boz ihsir risTG- 
jiH clETir he deniec or icsde -cait : ist mc the =75120. vtnet- "^ hms 
tr iaiior *" l»e hindarec or bmkssi mv. I^e: ii Tanahi. as ths IwsJ 
lueaiif IT Tirr^Tdinr for ""Ton. an£ "^te hesr Tr*e^eiE^e a^raixs: idfi^- 
uefe. nii3irr^den?s. ant "^■arranry. 

Bic honof caimoi he rsuan-c nmsss ih-T" mEy he emnr~e£. Iz 
heiourr^ therefore if t Hem-cial Cfloe tr TStair anc imrorw^ ms^ 
o& of emorremsn^ vheisr of -ratimff ^ anc ttriritssres at thf part 
of the masters, nr of iahnr nt Ihe part of aie sia:^»ss. 

First, as ir «he -maiggrs. Sc Mr le rajsinn: innr 5«::iec an£ si?- 
nnnstanres ssenre "zhtar fine ear* of their sis^'es. i is ^p'sIL Sie 
sr ikr as ueeflfnl tha: rar^ mnsi "he sscursc Y»<- ue^ IsciskGiDR. anfl 



ObBervar. ?u> 24/ '• Tie -auuisanoi- Hn£ lacs of -amiyHincSp of lite isst tmc. 
tranuaiif "rha: "hr^r i>Pirr?c ir berr irtnr rbf Clic Vend, onr ■»-h.u± a?r sasr. 
e^'srr -V bcrf ynlinic ?rcjnr hsiss nr juieshsaife nf scrrar fcxmc hacks and 
drt^js. and carj: u»air anpiiws, and acrtiiatv sinmiaimisi: 5i*e biaci^ jt Tcary 
Oi^mrsnsxns nf iaiwir. arc sfrrinar: rbe oussant bcvvsid aL can3itTOars\. iharsat- 
rsrv .s Tinr or.rr at imu^i'ttssarr f-^ bnx & Twnmiarj" rcss.*" *• I ?iir :jnaiie 
mitrf Bumf^ nC tut jaaiitanni;,' skts nnf of ^hf iaressr sjjsar Txlaifwis is. 
~. ni->giHT .R »• ^ CTCTEi: it inir smaT Sctes. arscgrng iirife jwsasrss. and "!sr£^- 
iiic -dieir tr xlMSif &ni2ise nf enarrscccs. ■ibr^ "briuCTic nr tr^ si-.rar "hnisj? 
«f mnri ran? ammaihr tor rfini. zhis ■yabs'^Tnir m* iyfOE all tbi^ "^--xatuitti. 
jsawnsiiuiizifis. and crpensf* nf Ttrr^ndinc fee a tuiodsed and firrv *ii:'<-* ^ba: 
snus: be fed. circiied. and i&ker, rars nf ■wrhct sack, -^cbsibar zt* 2nrj« ta£ « 
nrc ; anc tis? tmw is nn: iar nf xiiiT zbe cspenmsnt -wriL br mate' ir the 
entirf sarisiai'tinr nf pvsrv sfmiherr man : th8??t«- Tcndarinc sis^as; a wcfc- 
T.-.B-^ iuirast »c crk^ous tr be bfcne. and -^daat naus be ^dtyr^T <^ ' 



90 

must be enforced by the executive powers of the State ; and so 
much the more decidedly as the slaves are less able to secure their 
own rights. Some officer from among the slaves may be the 
channel of complaint, and some court of redress may issue the 
complaint without cost to the slave ; save where his proceeding 
shall liave been merely vexatious and causeless. The masters, if 
needful, may be compelled to furnish suitable rations and privileges. 

As to the slaves, also, there must needs be means and methods of 
enforcement. In every country, in the freest States, it is right 
that labor should be enforced. The State, responsible to provide 
for pauperism, may take measures to prevent it ; may insist on some 
honest method of supplying the wants of the people ; may con*ect 
as well as prevent, may prevent as well as correct, idleness, vagran- 
cy and improvidence. If slavery be retained under some amelio- 
rating code, then not only may the masters be compelled to provide 
rations and securities, but the slaves may be compelled to suitable 
labor — the labor needful to enable those rations and securities. • 

Before suggesting the proper methods of enforcing labor, let it 
first be required that every pains should be taken to prevent the 
necessity of enforcement — to secure voluntary labor. This will be 
partially done by retaining slavery, i. e., by keeping up the habits and 
expectations of those who, from generation to generation, have been 
" held to labor." Let no formal emancipation hazard those habits 
and expectations ; for, whatever nominal or real freedom might 
result from it, there can be no release to the mass of men from the 
labor by which they must live, — from the " sweat of the brow," in 
which they must " eat their bread," — while yet the old habits and 
expectations might be broken up without any sufficient substitutes. 
Let, then, slavery be so far retained as to preserve the old habits 
and expectations of labor, and the old sentiment of obedience in it, 
that there may be no lack of the old rations and privileges furnished 
thereby. It is, I believe, an undisputed fact, that the British West 
Indies Avere, in this respect, made too free, — were released unhap- 
pily from the habits and expectations of labor — from the sentiment 
of obedient labor; emancipated, so far as this matter is concerned, 
to their own disadvantage. If to the old habits and expectations 
there be added such ameliorations as sensibly promote the well- 
being of the slaves, there will be every reason to hope for voluntary 
labor ; for which, also, there are these natural provisions , — 



91 

1. Task work ; giving at once the needful security to the mastei 
for the services due for rations and privileges, and to the slave an 
opportunity to provide for his comfort beyond those rations and 
privileges. 

Where definite daily tasks are not practicable, results may be taken 
instead ; in common parlance, labor may be done by the job ; as a 
field cultivated, a harvest secured, wood cut and hauled, — whether 
by one, or by a company united under one leading and responsible 
head. This method might be carried into any kind of employment, 
and to any extent within the scope of African contractors, receiving 
a good margin for their private advantage, and yet securing to the 
master all that is now expected from slave labor. 

2. Rewards for faithful and skilful service ; for daily labor well 
done ; for a course of tasks well performed ; for contracts diligently 
and advantageously fulfilled.* 

But with all the advantage of the habits and expectations of labor 
preserved, and of a method of tasks and rewards, there must still 
be supposed a necessity of enforcement, and of course there must 
be allowed a power of enforcement, all, subject to the checks and 
appeals to be named hereafter. 

1. If there be any system of rewards, the mere withholding them 
may be found an adequate enforcement. 

2. The Scripture rule, " If any man will not work, neither shall 
be eat," suggests an obvious method, viz., the rations of the idle may 
be curtailed. 

3. Property being allowed and encouraged, there may be punish- 
ment by fines, properly guarded ; not accruing to the master's ben- 
efit, save to repair his damage, but to some fund for the advantage 
of the slaves. 

4. Solitary confinement and the whip may be allowed — but re- 
served, especially the whip, for the last resort — under reference and 
decision of some authority above the overseer or master. As in all 
governments, so it must be understood here, that force is the least 
available, and has its eflfect not by being frequent and general, but 
by being unfrequent and special, — by being, in truth, the last and 
indispensable resort. 

5. There may be added, also, the power of selling against his 

* Compare Clarkson's account of Mr. Steel's methods. 



92 

!j idle and nes^Kgent, after due delaj aod 



Section II, 

Marriage and i}<£ Dorrveslic ReUuiora. 

TLc«e are bad bonds *iicb are stronger than marriage and 
patemitj. Witl»out the domestic relations, there is no normal con- 
ditaon of sornetj, no right portion of human beings. The^e rela- 
tions, therefore, must be sustained, in order to well-being. What. 
ever mar be the probable issue of this requirement, it must still be 
made. In thi. matter, most surelj, evil mu.t not be done that good 
Hiaj come. *= 

Id order to the securitj of tbe domestic relations, marriagf- must 
l.^ at a dvil arid religir^s .y.ntracl for life, before official persons 
arid Mitnes^s, and with appropriate ^>lemnitiee ; must be considered 
a. ja'.-red and indissoluble a* with the whitr. race ; and must he die- 
boh-ed onlj on the sarxie conditions and with the same formalities. 
rbe crimen against marriage, also, fornir;ation and arJultery must 
be under the ii^>in*ir<i\ laws <A the wmmumiy. 

The famiJj thus establish.^ mu.t 1^ sa.;rr^l ; „,ust be prote^-U-d 
us iU relations ^.f hushand arid wife, parents arid children ; arid must 
rKX 1^ «eparat^ fvr l.^s .pauses, or on harder- <x;nditionH thar- with 
the white race. 

There will f^, a dir.^;t and blesM^ advantage V> the mast^.rs bv 
the^t^^hshmerrt arid jx^rr/iarience of marriage and the domoJc 
rdalKXi., W^use it M^;ur.^ t/> the slave* the grea(.«t U>.n of lif. 
arid dehvers them from life's gr^^tx^t evil, in pW;e of the misr-ry' 
r^.. .uii^^r^A hy themselves in tJie hreai^ing up of /amiJies s^i ofl.r. 
o<;*;urnng, aiid always », yu^\jUi Uj wmt. 

There „.u«t d^, f,, ,, ■„,.,,^^^^^ ^,,^^^^j^^^^ ^..^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^.^^^ ^^^ 

tue «>lave«. Wliat>;ver promo(/.s ^y^ntr^ntraent and propi-r i-niov- 
»^H; w)«,i^ver aid. ^j.A u.^r^h m4 good .x.rid.^;t, mu.t proruoU, 
'^4 aid their diJigeri^^e and fidelity, arid must rrrake them more mid 
xaore val-^Ue s^i long as their s-.rvi..^^ are desired; ar,d regarding 
i^m matter urnpjy, more valuable, if tli..ir i^^.rvU^n are U> be sold 

Ai^m, Uiere must F>e »ome a/Jvantage in nHaining the arrange-. 
tt^Mt a.id authority ./f .Javery in promoting and establishing mar- 



at TUMrTmnirr" 



■ .rrr- t^'^tiki. .u 



■^X, :ir^ 'rrfiT-Ht 



jKsr JiiTtrf III, oi txtt-. ^uas 



:^ ct 'tatst Ustti! qiwni :Xk: 






• ^iMttHMifc ^^w ^Sttc«: :|Ut. >i»t 



94 

themselves more permanent, and become happier and better, rising 
in the estimation of their masters," " Slave property would becomo 
more permanent, and consequently more valuable." 

The following statement has been lately repeated in many papers- 
The last Xew York Colonization Jonmal quotes it, with favora- 
ble comments, from the Port Gibson (Mississippi) Reveille, as 
follows r — 

'• The project now being agitated by the people of Xorth Caro- 
lina, and soon to be carried before the legislature of that State, 
is one which, we think, to say the least of it, will create a sensa- 
tion. It is, 1st. To render legal the institution of marriage among 
slaves. 2d. To preserve sacred the relations between parents and 
their young children ; and 3d. To repeal the laws prohibiting tlie 
education of slaves. If this modification in the laws is made in 
North Carolina, as we are informed it probably will, other States 
will no doubt take the matter into consideration. The main fea- 
tures of the movement have been adopted in practice, or at least 
approved in theory, by nearly all our planters, so far as circum- 
stances would allow: and we cannot but think the modification 
is well worth the serious consideration of every southern man. 
Should the southern people think proper, after due investiga- 
tion, to adopt the regulation in each of the slave States, slavery 
will then be regarded in an entire new light, and the enemies of 
the institution will then be rolibed of their most fruitful and 
plausible excuse for agitation and complaint. There may be, 
however, evils to contend with, and objections to be answered, in 
the adoption of such a modification. We therefore leave the sub- 
ject open for future consideration, and, in the mean time, invite 
a free examination of the subject by our readers." 



Section 111. 

Sales and Emi^atioru 

The whole matter of Soles comes to be considered in connection 
with the requirement that the domestic relations shall be estab- 
lished and sacredly regarded. Besides the limitation of sales re- 
quired by the domestic relations, there may be others needful. 



95 

1. It is desirable, if not indi^pen-able, that sales should not be 
made without consent, except in the case of young children sold 
with their parents ; or orplians of such age that, as free, they 
would be disposed of at the discretion of their guardians, or the 
civil authorities. The more nearly this regulation can be 
adopted, the more cheerful and effective will service be likely 
to become. 

2. There seems needful, at least, a special provision in behalf of 
young females, whether in view of their actual exposure to the 
passions of base men, or to those apprehensions and fears which 
they may feel, making sales against their will the greatest injustice 
and cruelty. Xo sales of young females should be made without 
their own consent and that of their friends, except under due exami- 
nation and decision. 

3. There may be a provision for the sale of refractory slaves, 
without their consent, under the supervision and decision of the 
proper authorities ; which sale is to be considered as a transporta- 
tion for misconduct. 

If these prohibitions to sales now allowed by law, are made, it is 
plain that great inconvenience must arise to all classes of the com- 
munity, whether sellers or purchasers, debtors or creditors. The 
inconvenience seems so great, that it is generally assumed that the 
right of indiscriminate sale is essential to the institution; and that 
it must be valueless without it "We admit the immediate inconve- 
nience, but find in the advantages of a Remedial Code certain com- 
pensations, and at length a more valuable use and disposal of slave 
labor. 

1. The use of labor may be supposed to become more easy, secure, 
and advantageous, by means of the new restrictions on sale*. 
When the domestic relations, and even the wishes of the slaves, are 
known to be regarded, labor may become so much. more valuable, 
that there will be far less occasion for the sales which now seem 
indispensable. The relief may be found in the more economi- 
cal expenditure of a contented service, in the better industry of the 
laborers, the better cultivation of estates, or their enlargement by 
the redemption of waste lands. Thus, there may be less debt to 
provide for, less risk to the creditor, and less damage than would 
occur if slaves were not liable to " execution for debt," in the pres- 
ent state of things. 



96 

2. If the condition of both masters and slaves is made better, and 
if slave labor is thereby more satisfactory, then there may be less 
unwillingness to be sold, and thus an improved opportunity of sale 
by consent, beyond what would be found at present. 

3. No doubt, also, when there are occasions for sale, there 
will be found methods of selling whole families together, by barter 
or otherwise, with advantage to both buyers and sellers, and with a 
more satisfactory condition of the slave family itself. 

4. Slaves may be made willing to be sold often, no doubt, by a 
" bonus," given by buyer or seller, or both, or by a bounty proffered 
in certain cases by the State, to accrue to the slave's advantage, and 
to be invested for him ; and if with his master, then to be secured 
on his person, as hereafter explained. In this way it may be hoped 
that the occasions of buyers will be provided for, either by the 
consent of the immediate parties sought, or by its general influence 
upon the labor market at large. Thus under " the fishing bounty," 
the individual captain may succeed in obtaining the " hands " he 
seeks ; and if not, will find a sufficient supply in the general mar- 
ket. Thus it may be supposed that even the great western market 
may find supply. A government " bounty " accruing to the slaves, 
might be found to furnish voluntary labor, up to the whole demand 
for western emigration. 

5. Under the arrangements for the property of slaves, which we 
have to propose, there is yet another relief to debtor and creditor. 
The slaves themselves may prevent the necessity of sales, by loan- 
ing their own property to their masters, on the security of their 
own persons up to the amount loaned ; thus relieving their masters, 
satisfying the creditor, investing their own savings securely, and 
keeping whatever favorable position they may be enjoying in their 
master's service. 

6. As to the security for debt now existing in the liability of sale, 
the State, if it abolish the existing law on which they were made, 
must answer for all contracts. When the courts have given judg- 
ment against the debtor, the judgment must be levied on the State 
and not on the master, and the State, if needful, must make such 
disposal of the slaves as is consistent with the new regulations, and 
hold itself responsible for any balance which would have accrued 
to the creditor, if the slaves had been sold without the " ex post 
facto " disadvantage. 



97 

7. The new restrictions once enacted, then all contracts would 
come to be made in view of them, and the business of life would 
go forward as it now does, under settled legal exemptions. It is no 
new principle to make exemptions of property, and to have them 
taken into the account in making contracts. The widow's dower is 
a long-established instance. With questionable reason, some States 
have added the homestead exemption. 

8. The distribution of estates, except as embarrassed by unful- 
filled contracts, may, perhaps, from the first, be required to take its 
course under the new laws. 

9. With regard to the occasions of buyers — to the whole difficulty 
of getting the service which is needful — in the first place, buyers 
must submit to the indispensable changes, for the sake of humanity 
and justice, at whatever inconvenience ; while, in the second place, 
it may be hoped that methods will be found of supplying every 
needful service within the scope of humanity and justice ; and thus 
with the prospect of better service. 

10. With regard to the requirements of emigration, the especial 
necessity of our extending settlements, at the South as well as at 
the North : — No doubt there must be at the North, as at 
the South, a continual emigration of capital and labor, with the 
desire to improve a prosperous or to repair an impaired condi- 
tion ; and as at the North, so at the South, it must often be with 
the painful severance of family bonds. But this severance must 
be on the same principles with the slaves as with the free ; must 
never be with the slaves in such wise as is not tolerated with 
the free. 

Nevertheless, if there be emigration, if the southern West is to be 
occupied from the southern East, there must be a removal of labor 
as well as capital — of slaves as well as masters. But let the re- 
moval of slaves and the supply of labor be provided for in such 
ways as the following : — 

(1.) Let the removal of slaves be with their masters and their 
masters' children, of them and their children. Let it be a patriar- 
chal removal. Let whole families of slaves be removed, parties 
being exchanged, by barter or sale, with neighboring plantations, in 
such wise as to unite families, whether left or carried. 

(2.) So far as the good will of tlie slave is concerned in this matter, 
and with the general design of furnishing a sufficient supply of emi- 
9 



d8 

grating labor for the soath-westem market, there may be offered, aa 
intimated in reference to the general market, a bounty, which, for 
this purpose, may be special and larger than for other services, 
thos securing yoltmteers ; the bounty, if the slave desire it, to be 
secured on his person- 

(3.) There is jet another method of providing for south-western 
emigration, yiz, : The removal of free blacks as laborers with 
good wages ; L e., provided that adequate laborers can be furnished 
from this class. There must alwavs be a multitude sufficiently 
needy to be induced by the promise of good wages, to try a new 
method of life, where, without being enslaved, they may have the 
opportunity of labor and acquisition, — the provisions and securities 
which capital alone can famish. 

In order to aid thia arrangement, and thus to rid themselves of 
an ill-proyisioned population, as well as make good provision for 
it, the States, seyerally, may extend the " bounty - to those free 
blacks who shall go west as free laborers, under such engagementa 
as will render them available. Such '^bounty" might be under 
the strpervision of State commissioners, appointed to make the 
■nrangement muraally advantageous to the employers and em- 
ploy ed. 

If the West Indies can be at the expense of importing " coolies " 
for their plantations, or in truth if slaves can be imported from 
Africa ; or, once more, if the internal slave trade can find a con- 
stant market, then surely the purchasers can afford and will be 
willing to give a " bonus '' and wages, stich as might be an induce- 
ment to large numbers of " free blacks," at once to emigrate and to 
become available laborers, even without the '• bounty " which we 
bave proposed should be offered by the State. 



Secttoh IY. 

Slaves to he capuUe of acquiring and hdding Projuriy. 

The law of marriage being settled, and the domestic relations 
secured, there must needs be added the power of acquiring and 
holding property for themselves and their heirs, under the general 
laws of property and inheritance, with whatever special rules and 

Irmirationa, 




.>-fpe ^/misrjaja liiu 3x 



sii^ffs. ami -^^ - 






.i:tti«»i^ $uiy9^^ ld&. 



100 

fbr service dae, and to whatever extent their skill and capital maj 
reach. 

3. The redemption of waste lands furnishes another obvious mode 
of acquiring proj>ertv. Slaves mav be encouraged to expend their 
extra labor and gains on such lands, under the assurance that the 
improvements made shiill accrue to their benefit, under some mod- 
erate allowance for the bottom, or at some agreed or arbitrated 
price. A provision for such improvements exists in China. "Any 
one, bv simply applying to government, may obtivin permission ; 
and a wise exemption from taxes until the Lvnd becomes pro- 
ductive, allows the cultivator to reap a proper reward for his 
industry ." * 

4. They may take leases of property, worting it with their capi- 
tal, paying rent for their persons and lands, and having a chiim for 
remaner^ttioa fcff all improvements they make, at a fsiir and arbi- 
trated rate- To such leases, with security for the improvements 
made, the comparative prosperity of Ulster is ascribed amidst the 
miseries of Ireland-f Such leases may be made in perpetuity, if 
experience should encourage it, as likely to be beneficial to the 
slaves and the masters alike. The lease in perpetuity of lands and 
persons would indeed be a virtual Ireedom, lacking only the rent 
paid for his own person ; and in view of a provision hereafter to 
be suggested, thus paid, in preference to diminishing his capital by 
the price of his person. Of the advantage of leases in perpetuity, 
both to proprietors and tenants, we have illustration in Mr. Col- 
thorst's account of an experiment in Ireland, on two esti^tes under 
his charge. 1 

Besides legalizing the acquisition of property, it becomes a Cluris- 
tum State, wise and mercifiik to encourage and aid its secure and 
advantageo^os investmer^t. There are modes of investment imphed 
in the preotrding ways of acquisition. The following direct methods 
are suggested. 

1. An open account with the ms^er,aid held by the slave, like a 
^vings-bank book; the sums to be on a moderate interest, and 
secured oo the person of the slave, so that if the master refuse or 

• Bladtwood-s Magazine^ Ort. 18-54, p. 595. 
t New ToA Ofaeer^. July 5, 1850. 
X TrfWMkm Mommg Chzoniele^ Jaaaarj 2, 18i9. 



■ IBflir "mBf* OFOSE TT HUim ~' 



i. "SbOiTes. jiE^ T»««Trf«r. '«!»*"r".niirr '?'"^ter- ttt-*!ii??^^ ito"- 't^ 'i: 



^<)ia ant TiHiitifU iitxt atc-iutti. rir ai. aiKtyiMitu 






flw j*aD«-* >*i{M«*a^ ^unjijt,)' TH«>v f;i«*^ 



9t^ -bm, Ibb, m^k Ik bd aofuiei ^k wiMk six da js cf Ae 

Sicnojr T. 
Edvcaiitm arx? JBeEtpxovr WortJeip. 

2>v ujuu. ;u*: dar^ are btimaii. aod hare a ri^hl to ali poeeiUe 
advamacts ^i^^xni^s tc -dior immaniiT : are cxitatied to all poen- 
lAt jntri^tw for liieir -<irai3K a£ mteHecxoal, moiaL and social beings. 
^ WE •&£ in Tesard to liit Ernropeas race, so we maj do. in iatt, 
ic jpegard iv iiui Ainxxsi • Inn liwa* is no just principk <if fkilur* 
win* ^aliier lad^viduaEr asid soeiallj. we are l^ouitd lo provide 
maam^euig. Vj vur ywvj ior buth rmsf* alike. 

Jn Tewiirkj^. ^leu. eidacaixw antd rdt^xfm worbii p ior iLe E.laT<«, 
k i: lieiedfed «» alvdlH^ da^err ? Or mar we xtoi ak: 
fi«e«fc affirasia^ni l«si«r br eiaverr reuu&ed ? L e^ in . 
^iBili^ «{ tei^ iield to Mvvr^ better tban br armuUing •.:*t g:^.;^^^ 
Hoc aafi Ibe iiabii* nf <A0^i«ai labor r Wbale^er auewer ezj^eri- 
eofW: toanr jcm: 10 ibese ^uetstiwtt, ix it plain tiiat imder a Ker." - > ] 
Code, as fiaee retstiuiop axid amelkiraUiqr tbeir prei-eut r*rhi\,y: v> 
finEair isasur^ b<»tij iaA\j^su<^ and autiKritT wiB liave uavauju^*} m 
tumour aui ijjpyi'Au^ tbe be« arrauwenieuif- 

A* ei?^^' niie^-e eibe- «ebte«tlii>H xuo«t Ije 
reH^ioMi ^d*btx/t»(m^ Tbe buittai '^■'" '/ cii: 
e>d v-o iw' -n'bvie xst&uxie aad «*•/ 

d(«et w/i ^in« y - 

*i^ vnau'apiet v 

ta'.-'" , /' 'n*:s*y^JUA.. «. . . . . ^^ 

«u<! rvtoi pr<r»«aA<9d Ivf estrtb a«id tujie, 4* weU a* t^^r efrrwity. Jf 
«dueidiV!0 niu«t be x«:^]^iMi*, it mutt alw/ be CTif^UuraJ ; ior at Chriny 
anb tuei 4tf/d a Cbj!^«lis«* |ie«y/le^ w* bare at«3»>:;pted Oie ^yyiptore* 
«s Hj*: *yuj>f ea«e i^uide Stf*d afittburit<jr. in ih». rex^wire***! »« pr(>- 
v'i&fr ii^iUiA. tii^ii^a/ikxb teaK^Mujr ; b*sJievix>^ litjit (<//• tbe ^^eat yut- 
|4*et </ *jtui iHe aaud tbe juez^ ^«* /?«if<fc tt!u/i^/:jAmmd 'w> awpk, — 
diat be wiM/ rt \t»iiit^>. tbe lJib>; bw *bwjditfjt <yf^/n«iu}ty to leans 
\m dttlie* -^ V <^>.v<j aAi4 «uai«f — bit wb^tJe iwiit and xteed, whI aU U«6 



■.»i im an ^-a t rt fe- ,2^ .aiu jt ' fc * 






41 






Sl Txsglj t Li^ a, Semefidl Cs^ fee 

Kt&i^L MtfteanidEiaBBalianff«e]tea%lke«barfi&Hii onmrip 

die 3iav« rftiin po3sec Jreeaom. wit&oat thjeoi. it is not te fee ( 

inac die best edueaced wiH p»?c^:T« ic, ami know Kedfier 

^!v^ op the salM. advantages of * rariiranw ami pri\r3ieges " 

snptv name of feeedom. — tiea hrfngrng na 

rht^<TT ami dieir ciiiidrsbiu Tlie (suises of 

eancesiied people nurr be hoped &r ;: tie 

rsfeefliuii no lonffer exisiiig. die Ssacs of 

natw awav". The miiiJTiM^ beccanimr in taruii. t^e 

<»Hniniin£uKa aruund Aem. die -i&cxioDS and inAseoKEB 

them e^TQL now^ aagerJier will be sr&e^hmedifaHA mattaoA CBfl^iia 

prevail « munh die mfire. ind. not 

are ediicaced iQiJeileciuail"^. 

Firdier. ander die 
TTTg ^ixfta nmsc needs nod ^caitraas ssaue: nn Vi fmiSiiu at» war??^ TBiC 
natacal desires wiiich issoe mi a^tfaftlfaftiiig tfift yoim^ in danuestSe 
fifie. — die -lare of joaas :nniili>^, now as 
tbose of tfae white race. — die acoeaipc 5ir 
legaiiaed tn diose snll ■* held m laiior.^ aad 
3ir!H and hopes^ — die care of eaiargjed buffiness flW t&OKS: w&v ta>- 
aamfi <;apafaie of it by- zrawinji 'Sapatuiy and i^apttai ; amS SP fffioey 
(feaar^ die apea .zhance (i£ hacT^jost fuil freedom, not widuait bolt wn& 
die meanH if iappivinc die Ia«t •' ranons and priv^eggg ; " — ailtiese 
wiH ^ve ample scooe and emolovmenc no w&acev<ar eaarsv and a*?- 
lJ??icv: tn wharever 'lapaciry and educadiuu Stiil riirdiery tiere 
mxaid. be opeaine, ^^finr nngiTT. warions oificeft of r^^fhin^ <}£ 
iins aorvice ^id ouc ynrttm;^ palie&. 

aacTrosF TX 

IS« PraiBetuj/i tfTJke Lasas : .Ju^ezifd Pmoisumx ocnd MeiiJituSs. 

The wboie aodal poiirj^ if a Srjaca has. an donhc, fcr its 
T- ^j t^j ■* Woaisae^'^er j<5 T^iiid diac men ^niiirf dn ta jajii. do je 










^. 



"-■ -Ac-^n 



106 

2. There mu?t needs be a repeal of all cruel and oppressive laws; 
and whatever cruelty or oppression may have been sanctioned by 
custom must be forbidden by law. As intimated in Section 1, all 
summary whipping even, must be forbidden ; for if force must still 
be allowed to compel labor, it will do it with better success when it 
is deliberate and judicial, and therefore unfrequent. The most 
effectual penalty for oppression and cruelty of any sort may be the 
forfeiture of the slave ; partly to himself, and partly to some public 
fund in aid of a Remedial Code. 

3. In order to secure justice it is indispensable to admit the testi- 
mony of slaves ; — it may be done cautiously and experimentally at 
first ; but probably better, instantly and fully, with such conditions as 
shall best tend to secure its truth. If their testimony must be consid- 
ered unreliable, it should be remembered that it may become more 
trustworthy the more it is trusted ; and that, at the worst, the tend- 
ency of fiilsehood is always to betray itself and to discover and sus- 
tain the truth — giving still the opportunity of right decision amidst 
false witnesses. This triumph of truth over falsehood has been had 
a thousand times in the courts of Hindostan, by means of falsehood 
itself. 

4. There may be needed the repeal of laws interfering with harm- 
less liberties and innocent assemblings, which can only be decided 
in view of circumstances as they are, or may become, in the pro- 
gress of ameliorations. In general terms, the occasions which seemed 
to require such laws may be expected to become less and less 
numerous and imperious, as improvements are made in the general 
condition of the slaves. A contented peasantry would not need 
them. 

5. There may be required officers and courts of the slaves them- 
selves, capable of arresting wrong proceedings, of requiring and 
enforcing labor from the slaves, and rations and privileges and fair 
treatment from the master; all checked and restrained by tlie right 
of appeal to the higher courts. 

There may be conservative, preventive, and even judicial officers 
— a slave tribune, with power to arrest arbitrary proceedings and 
require investigation ; a court of slaves themselves corresponding to 
a justice's court, with one justice and two assessors, with power to 
call juries in certain cases ; these officers to be chosen from the 
slaves, and by the slaves, of an estate or contiguous estates, under the 
power of veto by the master or the courts. 




'I a->.k.* srT5 Mr. 



e in inie 



jsjvM 






_7ll:— " 

t See discksai'* • Tiiragiias^' Iks. 



108 

*' The slaves are organized into a perfect republic, possessing all 
the elements of a free, legislative government. Their trials for 
misdemeanors and crimes are by a jury, with witnesses examined 
and special pleadings, with all the solemnities of a court. In im- 
portant and difficult cases, the old master is called in to preside a3 
judge, and to decide upon some difficult point of law ; but the ver- 
dict, sentence, and execution are all in their own hands." 

Section VIL 
Franchises and Freedom. 

We have proceeded on the assumption that slavery, ameliorated 
as proposed, is a virtual freedom, while yet the essential element 
of slavery, the " being held to labor," is retained : the best freedom 
for the slaves, as a mass, in their actual circumstances now, and for 
an indefinite future. A Remedial Code is not preparatory to eman- 
cipation, but instead of it. 

Nevertheless, there may be supposed admissible in the progress 
of amelioration, first, some extension of franchises to those remaining 
slaves ; and secondly, an opportunity of full emancipation to such 
as may choose it ; thus giving to all some share in providing for 
their social well-being, and opening the path for individual progress 
and advancement. 

1. The franchises of the mass of slaves, remaining slaves, may be 
extended, if, in the progress of amelioration, the way should be 
clear. We have proposed already that they should be able to elect 
certain magistrates to act in their own affiiirs. To this may come 
to be added, on their possessing a certain amount of property, a 
right of voting [jus suffragii) in the State, by means of slave 
" Comitia ; " their votes having a fractional value compared with 
the votes of the free ; perhaps the same fraction actively, as 
now passively, in the United States. This fractional franchise 
might be limited to matters in which their own well-being is spe- 
cially concerned. 

2. There shoidd be open to all the opportunity of acquiring full 
personal freedom ; i. e., the entire release of the slave from being 
held to labor, with the corresponding release of the master from the 
obligation of rations and privileges. In this opportunity there may 



109 

be a two-fold advantage, viz., of hope and exertion in those who 
may aspire to personal freedom, and of contentment in the mass ; 
at once in view of the failure of advantage to those becoming free, 
and the still open way to those who may choose it. Thus it is well 
that the way to mercantile and commercial enterprise is open to the 
whole agricultural community of the North, for the like two-fold 
advantage of hope and exertion on the one hand, and contentment, 
with the settled advantages of their birthright lot, on the other. 

The master may be required to sell at a fixed, agreed, arbi- 
trated, or adjudicated price ; and also to keep an open account with 
the slave preparatory thereto ; thus incurring a debt to the slave, 
available to fractional parts of his liberty as its security, and to full 
liberty at last. In like manner, all debts of the master to the slave 
secured on his person, may, for lack of payment, end in a fraction 
or the whole of personal liberty, whether desired or not. 

The fractions of liberty attained might be registered according to 
law, the master being thereby free from a Hke fraction of rations 
and privileges to the slave, and the slave being then entitled to the 
use of his freed time. If he be sold, it must be under the reserva- 
tion of his partial freedom. 

3. Slaves becoming personally free, must come with reference 
to franchise into the condition of their class in the States where 
they reside. If Massachusetts had now slaves to be freed, they 
would come into the full franchise of citizens ; and without damage, 
if the class remained in its present minute proportion to the whole 
people. At the South, they must come into the actual condition of 
their class, and without the franchise of citizens, but at liberty to 
remove, or to remain contented with their lot, awaiting any changes 
which time and experience may suggest, — such franchises, for in- 
stance, as have been suggested for the slaves in comitia for certain 
purposes, and commimal, wherever they may form separate commu- 
nities. If it be insisted that there is no available freedom without 
full citizenship, it may be replied that the State has done its duty 
when it has legislated /or them, though not by them; provided their 
absolute interests have been duly cared for ; and if their position is 
still unsatisfactory, that they are at liberty to withdraw to those 
States where full franchise is allowed ; no doubt to be checked and 
disfranchised if their ingress should be rapid and great : the sense 
10 



no 

of the North being now and then proving itself against free soil for 
large proportions of the African race in their midst. 

As to any presumed danger that the numbers of the free would 
become too great for the interests of labor, and of course of the 
slaves as well as of the masters, it maybe answered, — 

Under slavery ameliorated, with families established and pro- 
tected and property legalized, there must be expected such a regard 
to the uses of property, to the advantages and comforts which it 
adds to the rations and privileges of slavery, as will prevent too 
numerous purchasers of freedom. And this regard to the uses of 
property cannot fail to be enhanced, by the observation of the free 
as being often in worse condition than those remaining in slavery, 
and enjoying at once the provisions oY slavery and their own legal- 
ized property beside. The present free blacks at the South may 
themselves come to desire the ameliorated slavery. Besides, if there 
be proper " methods for the free," then this class may be found 
more and more fulfilling their part in every department of labor, 
like the free citizens of the North ; and more than compensating 
any deficiencies caused by the ameliorations of slavery. ' 



Section VIII. 

The Methods for the Free. 

If freedom should extend to any considerable numbers, there 
would then be imperiously required some special methods for the 
free, by which their own welfare might be the better aided and 
secured, as well as that of the other portions of the community. 
Indeed, even now, at the North and at the South, the necessity of 
some special methods is manifest ; and if this be questionable at the 
North, it is only because their numbers are so small. Owing to 
peculiarities of race and condition, there have been found difficul- 
ties hitherto, and there is a dread of any considerable increase of 
the class, not only in the slave States and the free States adjoining, 
but even to the remotest North. And these difficulties and this 
dread are not due to slavery merely, but must have existed if the 
emigration from Africa and the settlement in this country had been 
free from the first, unless prevented by the wasting of the African 
race like the aboriginal barbarians. With the race among us, and 



Ill 

with experience of the difficulties belonging to them as free, we 
seek methods suited to the case. 

1. Freed slaves may be required, for a term of years at least, to 
register their names, occupations, places of abode, and the returns 
of their industry up to a certain amount, and if found vagrant and 
neglectful may be compelled to labor. As the State must take 
charge of free, colored pauperism, in lieu of the former masters, so 
it may take measures to prevent it. No community can be required 
to confer the right of food, raiment, and lodging, and at the same 
time to leave the right of idleness and vagrancy, — of want, to be 
provided for. 

2. Under the above regulation, there may be allowed full liberty 
of settlement and employment. 

3. Arrangements in aid of free colored people, such as have been 
spoken of in regard to those remaining slaves, are desirable ; 
encouraging the acquisition and investment of property. Methods 
of acquisition and investment should be provided for them. 

4. The above being understood, — that they are to have full 
liberty of settlement and employment, and to be specially aided 
and encouraged in the acquisition and investment of property, 
— then, fourthli/, the employments to which they are accustomed 
and which are the most open to them, are to be chosen, and are not 
to be forsaken, without definite and good reason, in the mere hope 
of changes for the better, any more with them than with the white 
race when similarly situated. The servile employments to which 
so many of them have been accustomed, are good employments 
whether for white or black, whenever useful service can obtain its 
reward. If they be " low," it is better to continue in them than to 
make premature attempts to " rise." This is true of any race of 
people. It is true of those in servile employments of our own 
people. There must be more reason for the assertion, if pecu- 
liarities of origin, character, and race have hitherto consigned the 
free negroes to those employments ; and must have done so, if their 
immigration and settlement had been as free as that of the Saxon 
race. Servile employments are good employments when God orders 
them. And whoever in them, of whatever race or color, is faithful, 
honest, capable, will find the best elements of well-being ; and through 
them, not in shunning them, the best means — character, friends, 
facilities — by which to rise, as Providence may open the way, to 



112 

to whidi mohhndes of the white race 

Bat thk 'ricii^'' to bibber emplojmetits is not the thing to 
be de»red. Jn burge mmmaniries tb»e most be servile emploj- 
■tnln fiDed bj Aaee vbom PcoTideiice £rect;& This is not an 
umighlfK ms slate of sooetj. There is noduiig degrading in serv- 
ii^ otbasT * Act vdl yoor paitf there aE the honor lies." There 
is rooni, em in enftcced eerriee^ fiir the highest excellence and 
bfOBor. The fiermits of menr free from " eye sCTriee^" and '- serr- 
ing the Lord Christ, vith ginglgiicsg of h«ut and fearing God, 

AaH receire the revard of the inhezitaiice.'* In truth, 

w— inii i g for the most part as tbej are. in thdr accustomed 
trnftajmeBiSf dkcj will find themeelTes the h^ipkst and mart 
raqpeeted, — bei^ mcne md^endenty mote 
iKclal to othexsr and move c^dUe of reacbx^ 
than if titej were spedaify %parated from b»«er to b^faer emploj- 
meois. In order to be qoalified bt modi, a man most hare 
been fiutbM in that vhieh is Ettle. This maxim of frine wisdom, 
tnK for aB, mnst be more deqtlj tme of a race in d^ree mdm- 
profved and barbarooe. It is hike ^aritj and hike confidence, 
v^idh k forerer u i Mha i aiin g servile e^doTments, in the estimadoa 
of thoee who are fimad in them^ and who hare jet to prove theaft- 
adres abore them. . . . Let wfaoerer can, bj bis own exertioos 
and the &Tor of Pnmdence, '^ lise,' whether he be Mack or wfake; 
bill be who dban ''be raind,* withoot his own ^iD and care, and 
^aiKt the proviaans of Pnnidaiee, wiQ bat ank die fcwa- tor the 
mktaken pains^ whether he be white or black. Barbers, dioe- 
bbek^ and waiters, whether white or black, cannot be raised bj 
dbe ta& or han^ of others; hot acth^ their part weD, so loc^ as 
lAiej mn^ act it at aD, are not low, not ddmsed, not anUeseed, but 
ktjpfij and hooorafale, and in the be^ waj to " rise " to any worth j 




(1.) The ofportnnitj of „ . 

Aoald be open to them where Aqr are, as we bare 
mkeadj far the dares, remainiiig dares; to do any thing they 
t l i ] #i |a<l»gA rapahfe of doia^ howwer great Ae charge and 
~~ > their fidditf and ^iO, they 



▼in rise in respectaiiiliry and asefulnesa^ wichoac let or hia- 
derance. 

{2.) They maT be encouraged by - boanties " and wages ro emi- 
grate, as laborers in order w improve tiieir coadidoo, becoming 
thos free substirutes for any slaves withdrawn by the necessary 
checks upon sale.* They may in this manner be well provided Sat, 
and as they may be capable and successml, find leading employ- 
ments, or become themselves proprietors. .... Of coarse the way 
win be open, as now. from the South to the North, if they prefer. 

(3.) There may be, aL<k, oicoaragemencs aad ^uulides for tbrm- 
ing &ee colored communiries. as of townships or cooniies. in wiiidi 
the white race may be discouraged from setrJing, in sach wise as 
to secure the prediiminance of the colored ratfe. onder the general 
laws of the Scares and the United States. Illnstrating this, we 
have the account o£ a colored senlement a£ Carthagena, Ifcrcer 
county, Ohio, briedy as follows : f 

In the hope of beaering their own condition and that of their 
children, some hundreds leA their servile occupations in the cities, 
booght a tract of land thiry miles distant from the source o£ thor 
provisions. Now (184o) they have mary thoasand acres of cleared 
land and comfortaLIe houses, raise their own. provisions, manulrtc- 
ture their own clothing, have horses, hog?, cattle, and sheep, and 
meeting houses and school houses. They have a sawmill and grisc- 
TniT!- The white people respect them as mach. as they have reason 
to desire, come to their mills, employ their mechanics, and are em- 
ployed by them even as day laborers ; they bay and sell menially. 

Should such separate settlements be tbund successful, they no doBl>t 
might be extended in the midst of the wiiice population living coa- 
tiguoosly on terms of good neighfc-orhood. and with m4itual advan- 
tage ; and the new regions grow with, colored neigiiborhooiLs and 
villages, and townships intermiied; and wiierever there were 
enough to form corporate bodies, they might then be admitted to 
such communal fiunchises as the States may award to the individu- 
als ot their class. 

(4.) A principal method to - rise ' must be ertdgratijn to Liberia, 
as now under the patronage ot the American Colonization Society. 

• Compaxe Section 3. 
t Xew York. Observer, AiLgust 5, 13-H. 
10* 



114 

This method may be presumed good, and even the best for what- 
ever numbers can find a favorable entrance into the new colony; 
for whatever numbers may favor a well-ordered community, and 
shall not outgrow the capacity of self-preservation and self-direction. 
For limited, indeed, and yet for increasing numbers, it furnishes an 
opportunity at once for full franchises and all the employments of 
social life, even to the very highest. 

Besides the direct advantage thus afforded, there is also this ad- 
vantage indirectly. "In large communities there must be servile 
employments filled by those whom Providence directs." There 
must be those who work, as well as those who direct and pay for 
work. The more Liberia prospers and the more numerous its 
population, the more plain will it become that it furnishes no excep- 
tion to the common lot of men ; the more will it appear that free- 
dom on the highest scale, that entire separation from the evils of 
slavery and from the prejudices of color, does not reverse the mer- 
ciful as well as just doom, — In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt 
eat bread ; that no more in Africa than in America, can every body 
have high office and high place, wealth, and ease, and honor ; but 
that the mass in Africa, as well as America, black as well as white, 
with or without freedom, is still " held to labor," by the necessities of 
human condition, and by no act of man ; checking a thousand foolish 
aspirations of and for the African race. As Liberia prospers, if their 
condition be improved in some great essentials of human well-being, 
it must still become known in this country, and to the African race, 
whether bond or free, that the toils and difficulties of mortal life, 
and the distinctions even of masters and servants, are there as well 
as here ; that these are not the doom of slavery but of man — pre- 
paring their acquiescence in that ameliorated slavery for which we 
plead ; retaining only the indispensable elements of being " held to 
labor," and to maintain labor — loosing the bad bonds, and retain- 
ing only the good. 



115 



CONCLUSION. 



Let it be supposed that these ameliorations, prompted by the 
Southern States themselves, and by whatever suggestions, are faith- 
fully attempted, — the relation of master and slave thus far 
remaining, that the master is still " held " to provide rations and 
privileges, and the slave still " held to labor," by which alone 
provision can be made ; marriage established in its sacredness, and 
the domestic relations protected ; education and religious worship 
provided for ; the slaves legally capable of acquiring, holding and 
transmitting property, and equally with their masters under the 
protection of the law ; and all these with opportunities of freedom, 
and methods for the free, and we have then a Remedial Code in 
progress and perfecting by experience, suited to the whole case of 
Africa in America. We claim by such a code. 

That the well-being of the slaves is provided for — that they are 
virtually free ; and in view of the actual condition of their race, 
more free than with the whole franchise of American citizens ; 
better provided for all the purposes of personal and domestic life, 
than by any general emancipation ; and in most cases, than by 
individual purchase at the sacrifice of property legally their own. 

That the well-being of the masters is provided for : the climate 
and productions of the South, and the original and actual condition 
of the enslaved race, and long-established customs and habits contin- 
uing for substance the present relations of property and labor, — 
of masters to be honored and servants to honor, with the advantage 
of greater cheerfulness and fidelity ; to the mastei-'s joy, more and 
ever more, in proportion as bad bonds are loosed and good bonds 
only retained, 

We claim, also, for the free negroes, a progressive deliverance 
from whatever real evils inherited from Africa or America, and 
blessings in proportion to the blessings of the class from which they 
have sprung ; becoming more industrious and thriving in the midst 
of a thriving and industrious peasantry, and accepting diligent labor 
as the best lot of freeman or slave ; whether where they are, or, if 
they will, and when they will, in the land of their fathers, blessing 
Africa itself in the Christian industry of her returning sons. 

We claim, also, that in this direction, the conscience and philan- 



116 

thropv, of the country have fullest, freest scope ; not in instant 
remedy of all evils, but in just application of the great Christian 
law, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself;" meeting property 
and labor, slave-holders and slaves, in their mutual necessities and 
ills, — the suffering '• neighbor " on our path not to pass by with 
indifference, cruelty, and scorn, nor yet with aimless wrangles while 
we help him not ; but with the " oil and wine " suited to his 
wounds ; with the very care he needs, according to our power ; sup- 
plying the present and providing for the future with generous 
ai-rangements and faithful promises. 

Xor need we despair of results so great, "Whether in view of 
intrinsic or extrinsic difficulties — of the essential evils of Africa in 
America, or of reproachful zeal and discordant good-will, and even 
poUtical anarchy in the strife of equal forces, we may still assume, 
The things tchich are impossible tcith men are possible with God, 
Not that we expect miracles to be wrought, or set forth our hope 
confessed an enthusiastic dream. Rather do we claim that the 
whole work of utmost difficulty is within the scope of a common 
Pro\-idence, answering the prayers and aiding the humble attempts 
of men ; not as in the exodus from Egypt, by the miracles of the 
divided sea, and manna from the skies ; but as in the deliverance 
fi-om Babylon, by the aids of a common Providence, answering the 
prayers of the captives and blessing the purposes of men; opening 
'• the two-leaved gates," and breaking in sunder the " bars of iron," 
yet as gloriously " with a strong hand, and an outstretched arm." 



117 



POSTSCRIPT Dec 15. 

T}i.e contest for Spealcer ilbxstraiing ttie law of equal forcei.* 

The necessity of some new direction in regard to the questioQ 
of American slavery, was never more manifest than this very day : 
the Unitf-d States giving the maximum of illustration of their utter 
impotence, under the inviolable law of equal forces. If while we 
write, or at some indefinite future, a minute preponderance shall 
turn the scale, and our government be organized again, how plainly 
the law of equal fora.-s will remain, producing impotence again, with 
only intervals of minute and momentary preponderance ; removing 
the question of slavery in every form from the National Legislature, 
and calling for the creation of new powers for new purpose*, out 
of impotence itself. Instead of being shut, the way of wisdom 
and kindness wUl only be the more open to philanthropist and patri- 
arch, by the assurance that nothing can be done by authority and 
power. Instead of being open, the way will only be the more 
shut, by equibalanced attempts at authority and power. . . . 

As hitherto, after every struggle for sectional preponderance, the 
great questions between the North and the South must take their 
necessary settlement neither for the South against the North, nor 
for the North against the South, but leaving each to their own 
will and their own responsibility. The great Overruler has so 
nearly equibalanced them that neither section can prevail over the 
other. "We may try to make the weight heavier on either arm 
of the balance, but the scales will declare the truth, the moment 
our hand is taken off. However many may be the librations, the 
scale must at length settle on the unalterable principles of equi- 
poise. We may quarrel over an impossibility, but we cannot coun- 
tervail it. As from the beginning useless strife must still give way 
to leaving matters as they were, — ineffectual and injurious con- 
tention to the necessary agreement to differ. 

This last struggle, essentially in vain, will not be in vain, if it 
teach the country the truth forever illustrated by baffled attempts 
to overrule, on the one side or the other ; that God has so settled 
the equilibrium of sections, that there can never be an overruling 

* See Chapter 10. 



118 

North, or an overruling South ; and if it be felt to the very heart 
of North and South, that their only strength in the even-bal- 
anced scale is in impotence acknowledged ; in " vis inertice " made 
available by wisdom and good will as a reservoir of beneficent 
power. The two great sections may influence and aid, they can- 
not direct and control each other. The labors wasted in useless, 
baneful strife, are sufficient to raise a " power " which can work 
blessings over all the land. Repeating from the preceding pages, 
" Northern philanthropy will do its utmost, not by authority where 
no authority exists, not by an imperative balance where there is 
an essential equipoise, but without authority, and notwithstanding 
impotence, whenever it shall unite an available wisdom to fraternal 
good will." 



DEDICATION 



December, 1856. 

In the Postscript to the first edition of this work, December 15, 
1855, when the contest for " Speaker" was but just begun, I found 
the United States giving the maximum of illustration of their utter 
impotence under the inviolable law of equal forces ; and claimed 
that only a minute preponderance could turn the scale, that 
impotence would recur again and again, — removing the question 
of Slavery in every form from the National Legislature, and 
calling for new powers, for new purposes, out of impotence itself. 

That contest ended after many long weeks in giving the " Speaker" 
to the North, in antagonism to the South ; but with a pre[)onderance 
so minute as only to make more plain the law which hud been 



119 



transgressed ; with no working flicultj ; with no available power 
to give form to intention, to change purpose to enactment ; with 
no majesty of enforcement to give existence and stability to law ; 
impotent to the great work of sectional control, and only fore- 
showing and preparing the counter-vibration of the equi-balanced 
scale. 

Accordingly, despite the utmost efforts to maintain and increase 
the preponderance, — to give weight to the Northern arm of the 
balance, — the scale has turned again; yet not less plainly than 
before, with no decisive preponderance, reasserting and reassuring 
the law of equal forces, which neither Section is able to reverse. 
The Presidential election of November 4th, 1856, was the con- 
summation of proof that God has settled the equilibrium of Sections, 
so that there can never be an overruling North or an overruling 
South ; * — that impotence is the only strength in the even-balanced 
scale, the only element of beneficent power. 

At the same time what fearful illustration have we had of the 
miserable strifes of those whom God has joined together in essen- 
tial equality, — so much the more miserable because they can 
neither conquer nor separate, — threatening the lasting curse of the 
European race, with only evil to the African, who is the subject of the 
striie. So it happens, sometimes, in that best and earliest society, 
from which all society springs, — the family. The very elements of 
equal, inseparable and blessed union, render the life of the parties 



* It may be asked, Does not the law of equal forces produce the same impotence 
to prevent even the revival of the slave trade, with all its essential wrong, and all 
its voluntary accessions of enormity ? Undoubtedly it does, — unless the forces shall 
refuse in that case to be equal. You can make a power with the long arm of your 
lever, but you can make none when both arms are equivalent. But, inviolable as is 
the law of equal forces, with regard to the existing fact of slavery, I deny that it 
does or can have place in regard to the renewal of the slave trade. If it were pos- 
sible to suppose that the suggestions of a Southern governor and of Southern journals, 
which have just now startled the public mind, should venture to ask enactment and 
enforcement from the United States, — a living unity only by the provisional aboli- 
tion of the slave trade in the life-giving instrument itself, — the same causes which 
in 1787 united North and South, would be effectual again, only in tenfold greater 
power. The monitions of conscience, in regard to palpable and undeniable wrong, 
ruling the South as well as the North, — urged by the whole conscience and hu- 
manity of the Christian world, — would supply a force immeasurably greater to 
prevent the renewal, than there was to bring to pass the abolition of the slave trade. 



120 



only more wretched, because they can neither rule nor part, while 
ruin befalls the house which each is engaged to sustain. 

Under the deepest sense of these lessons and forewarnings of the 
year now drawing to its close, I dedicate this work to-day 

TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, 

THE WHOLE PEOPLE, 

E PLURIBUS UNUM. 

United by separation ; powerful over the parts by impotence 
as a whole ; weak in authority and power, strong by example and 
influence ; ruling by not ruling; — the foundations of the Pyramid 
on which the eye of Heaven has looked from the beginning, made 
firmer by every addition to its weight. 

May the vibrations of the even-balanced scale, in the year 1856, 
consummating the proof of the weakness of Sections against each 
other, and of their strength onXy for and with each other, inaugurate 

A NEW ERA, 

in which the whole wisdom of our history as one people, — great, 
undivided, indivisible, — shall prevail in councils and methods in 
regard to Southern slavery, as acceptable to the South as to the 
North, and as advantageous to the African as the European race, 
in their mysterious relations to each other. 



121 



UEYIEW 

OF THE DECISION OF THE SUPREME COURT IN THE CASE OF 
DRED SCOTT. 

Ik attempting a review of this decision, on which views so oppo- 
site are entertained by two great political parties, the writer does 
not propose to become a partisan himself. His work, springing up 
from the germ of 1820,* and growing and maturing until 185G, can 
have had no connection with the present times, and cannot apply 
itself to the advocacy of any party without leaving its original and 
better position as the eai'nest advocate of principles and methods in 
which it behooves the wise and good of all parties to unite ; equally 
suited to the philanthropic purposes declared by the anti-slavery 
North and to the patriarchal intentions which shall best provide for 
both races in the slave-holding and slave-held South. It is, then, in 
the hope of rendering some service in closing the strife, and not as a 
party in it, that we propose to apply the principles of this work to 
the Decision of the Supreme Court, for the high purpose expressed 
in closing the advertisement of the fourth edition, viz. : " To engage 
the South in their proper work in behalf of the Afi'ican race, and to 
unite the North in taking the only position in which they can render 
effectual as well as acceptable aid." 

In brief, the Supreme Court of the United States affirms the 
Decision of the Supreme Court of Missouri declaring Dred Scott 
a slave, on the agreed case that he had been formerly a slave under 
the laws of that State, and that his plea for freedom was insufficient 
— the Decision being incidentally affirmed, on the ground of want 
of jurisdiction. This is the simple point, and for our purpose noth- 
ing else need be stated. ^ 

Keeping in view the principles and design of this work, not only 
its claim of well-being as the true aim for the African race, but our 
whole National condition, we say distinctly and solemnly, without 
reference to the arguments employed by the Court, The liesuU 

* P. 16. 
11 



122 

reached was utterly and absolutely indispensable, viz. : that the 
Circuit Court of the United States had no jurisdiction in the case. 
This Decision was more a necessity of Providence, of HIM by 
whom the "powers that be" are ordained, than an act at its own 
discretion as the interpreters of the Constitution. The question at 
issue was not a National but a State question, by the very ordi- 
nances of Heaven, which made us at once separate States and a 
United Nation, and which, upon the special question of slavery, 
have so balanced section against section, as to neutrahze the power 
of the United States to enforce the reversal of a Decision of a Slate 
Court made on their providential inheritance. "With neither au- 
thority to reverse, nor power to enforce a reversal, non-interference 
became a necessity of Providence. 

The necessities which made the Constitution, the elements of 
State and National authority and power, do not depend upon, cannot 
be set aside by, the legislative and judicial proceedings of the hour. 
They were, in all their living force, in all their strength of causa- 
tion, before either the Convention which attempted to abolish, or 
the Convention which restored and defined the Central and Sov- 
ei-eign Unity of the still separate and Sovereign States, and before 
the sectional balance had revealed itself, as the necessary result of 
differences of climate and productions, and of common channels of 
intercourse and commerce — itself a determined element in " the 
powers that be." The elements which make the Constitution may 
be questioned, denied, denounced, but they cannot be annihilated, 
cannot be deprived of their living and causative strength, of their 
resulting force. Still it will be true, in the very elements of our 
existence, by which we are Sovereign States and the Sovereign 
United States, that we have no authority to annul laws and cus- 
toms existing in the several States, when we perfected in form our 
virtual Unity ; and as true that we have no power to do it in the 
matter of Southern slavery, numerical majorities in fact or anticipa- 
tion notwithstanding. To this end, there are no " powers that be." 
God has not wdained them. They may be asserted, argued, 
boasted, but they do not exist, and cannot rule. If there be wrongs, 
requiring redress, in matters essentially belonging to each Sovereign 
State when our Sovereign Unity took its form, they are wrongs 
beyond the legislative and judicial authority of the United States, 
and in the matter of slavery beyond their power. Whatever might 



123 

be the intrinsic merits of this case — however gross the wrong by 
the State Court — the United States had neither authority nor power 
to redress it. The responsibility was of the part, and not of the 
whole, of the State of Missouri, and not of the United States. 

As to the impotence of the United States to enforce a contrary 
decision of the Court, let the following suppositions be made, viz. : — ■ 

Let it be supposed that the Court had taken jurisdiction, and had 
decreed the freedom of Dred Scott, the United States Supreme 
Court reversing the Decision of the Supreme Court of Missouri : — 

Let it be supposed further, as the natural result, that thereupon 
every similar case should make claim to the same freedom, en- 
couraged and aided by the whole earnest philanthropy of the North ; 
and that one thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand, for whom 
a like plea might be made, should demand their freedom from the 
Courts of the United States, and should become actually, as well as 
virtually, free : — 

Let it be further supposed, that the owners of slaves, thus deprived 
of their property, as under the laws of their several States, and 
thousands more, finding their domestics rendered utterly unavailable 
for some of the most important services required by the well-being 
of fomilies, should make common cause against a decision so sweep- 
ing, and in their view so unjust, and should refuse to obey until the 
United States should enforce the decree : — 

And let it be supposed once more, that the States themselves — 
one state or more — adhering to their own laws and their own 
Courts, should protect and defend their own citizens against the 
Decision of the United States Court, — thus requiring the strong 
arm of power to enforce the decision. 

The question is not now, whether the United States, as a whole, 
can enforce a decision against a single individual, or a single State, 
but whether it can enforce a decision which, in its issues, unites the 
whole South against, though it were, the whole North, on this great 
sectional question, against the resolved resistance, or even against 
the resolved inaction, of the South. In this case it is not thirty 
against one, in which the common consent of the thirty can over- 
rule the one, but sixteen against fifteen, who have compensatory 
advantages against a nominal majority. Must not the difiiculty of 
executing annul any decree which depends on such an equipoise of 
power ? There can be no available decree, no ruling precedent of 



124 

the highest court in the land, unless it is sustained by the highest 
power in the land, and by the common sentiment of the people, by 
which that power alone can exist. A decision unenforced and unen- 
forceable is as futile, as much a dead letter, as an unenforced and un- 
enforceable law, — dead it may be by anticipation, dead it must be in 
its result, however it may cling to life. A sectional decision of the 
United States Court against the sentiment of the whole South, as to 
its rights and duties, how can it be a living and ruling decision ? 
What array of the United States, half against half, can give it vital- 
ity and force ? When Congress shall undertake to provide the 
munitions and the men for sectional enforcement, what power will it 
find adequate to enforce ? 

In that day of equi-balanced strife, of those librations of the scale 
which betray the minuteness of alternate preponderance, will not 
its power be the impersonation of impotence itself? That great 
Entity, the United States, resistless, overwhelming, when against 
the single individual or state, what force will it have when it is so 
equally balanced as to give no determinate preponderance ? That 
mountain rock, which would crush thousands in its fall — when it is 
balanced on itself, you may put your finger under it and be unharmed. 

The impotence of a power so mighty, the non-entity almost of an 
Entity so august, has ample illustration in the preceding pages. 
And with reference to the instance in question — to the power to 
overrule the Decision of the Supreme Court of Missouri, and 
give freedom to Dred Scott, to the thousands and tens of thou- 
sands of Dred Scotts — the power of its presumed librations — 
we need but shape our questions to those illustrations to make them 
Dnanswerable. When, then, the question of enforcement to the 
supposed Decisions of the Supreme Court, affecting the interests 
and self-approved rights of the whole South, shall come before the 
whole United States in Congress assembled, — to provide for sec- 
tional enforcement — munitions and men against munitions and 
men, arisen or threatening to arise, — what overruling power will be 
found in that all-powerful and sovereign Entity, the United States ? 
What can that equi-balanced assembly do, but react the impotent 
librations — the struggle and the weakness of equal forces, the 
powerless days and weeks which preceded the election of a sec- 
tional speaker to the thirty-fourth Congress ? — ending, if days and 
weeks, instead of months and years, could end it, " with no working 



125 

faculty, with no available power to give foi-m to intention, to 
change purpose to enactment — with no majesty of enforcement 
to give power and stability to law, — impotent to the work of sec- 
tional control, and only foreshowing the counter-libration of the 
equi-balanced scale." * 

In requiring the Decision of the Court, from the necessities 
which produced and would reproduce the Constitution, rather than 
from the direct interpretation of that instniment, we give the high- 
est possible encomium to the Constitution itself, if indeed it is the 
actual counterpart to those historical facts which make this nation 
what it is, E pluribus unum ; which give it its distinct and vigor- 
ous unity, and its distinct and vigorous plurality. At the same 
time we give the best justification of the Decision of the Court, if, 
indeed, as is averred by its opponents, it contradicts previous de- 
cisions of the same Court, and even of the very same judges 
themselves. 

No doubt, precedents, decisions of Courts of law, have a ruling 
effect, and will rule until from valid reasons they are themselves 
overruled. It is not merely by judicial decisions upon the applica- 
tion of laws and their correspondence with constitutional principles, 
that Constitutions are illustrated and perfected ; but as truly by 
decisions correcting decisions, whenever, in the progress of events, 
it may be plain that great principles have been transgressed. Thus 
the necessities which produced the Constitution have required from 
the first, and will hereafter require, corrections of previous decisions, 
in order to preserve Constitutional consistency, and this without 
making the Constitution the mere organ of uncertainty ; for each 
new correction can take its place as a reliable precedent, only by 
conformity to the great principles which originated the Constitution ; 
— new necessities and new providences only making more plain its 
original and fixed principles ; the written formula being only better 
understood and applied in the progress of that course of events in 
which as well as /row which it took its rise. 

So it is with the British Constitution. Neither Magna Charta 
nor the Bill of Rights, nor both, form absolutely the British Con- 
stitution, but those immortal documents along with the whole juris- 
diction of the hundreds of years which preceded, and have followed 

* P. 119. 
11* 



126 

them until now, — establishing yet, not Constitutional uncertainty, 
but more and more Constitutional certainty ; precedents at once 
developing and fixing the principles of the documents themselves. 
Our written Constitution of 1788, in like manner, has been subject 
to the course of events — to the necessities which time has made 
plain — to the decisions of that great Chief Justice who for thirty 
years explained it as cases occurrent made it plain to himself; and 
of his assessors and successors on the Bench, leaving with a mass 
of wise decisions which require no change, some which their own 
lifetime may have enabled them to correct, and some to be corrected 
as the appHeation of great principles should be made plain — not 
changing the Constitution, and making it nothing more than the 
opinion of the Court for the time being, but developing it more 
and more by decisions indispensable to its essential and necessary 
principles, — to Constitutional consistency. 

The question is immaterial, then, whether the present decision 
does or does not contradict some former decision. "We are not 
learned in the " cases," nor have we sought out the precedents. For 
aught we know or care to know, they may be right who assert that 
in the case of Dred Scott, the Supreme Court has decided against 
the Supreme Court, and Chief Justice Taney against Chief Justice 
Tanev. The only question is. Is this present decision required hy 
the necessities which originated the Constitution, — hy the progressive 
development of Constitutional principles, — hy Constitutional con- 
sistency 7 If it he, it is right, and will stand and ride hereafter, 
establishing what are the " powers that be," against whatever legis- 
lation and judicial decisions to the contrary. 

"WTiat then, it may be asked, is the Constitution ? Is it nothing 
but the decision of the judges on the Bench, as uncertaini and con- 
tradictory as may be the conflicting decisions of the Courts ? Have 
we deceived ourselves in the airy vision of the Constitution, when 
indeed there was no Constitution at all ? no standard, to which all 
acts of legislation, and aU judicial decisions, must conform ? As 
well might it be asked, after hundreds of years, What is Magna 
Charta ? Is it nothing real and substantial, because it has been 
almost seven hundred years under the same conditions of develop- 
ment and growth, as our " Constitution " for seventy ? so enduring 
and yet unsubstantial ? but an airy vision to the sight ? On the 
other hand, its substantial existence is only more assured by its 



iTSiTfT- roc i 

fe I: " 



128 

Indeed, so far from using the obnoxious phrase, as expressing the 
opinion of the Court, the Chief Justice impHcitly, if not explicitly, 
disavows it for the Court and the present day. " It is difficult," he 
says, " at this day to realize the state of public opinion in relation 
to that unfortunate race, which prevailed in the civilized and en- 
lightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of 
Independence, and when the Constitution was formed ; but the public 
history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain 
to be mistaken." * Again : " No one, we presume, supposes that 
any change in public opinion or feeling in relation to this unfor- 
tunate race, in the civilized nations of Europe or in this country, 
should induce the Court to give to the words of the Constitution a 
more liberal construction in their favor than they were intended to 
bear when the instrument was framed and adopted. If any of its 
provisions are deemed unjust, there is a mode prescribed in the 
instrument itself by which it may be amended ; but while it remains 
unaltered, it must be constnied now as it was understood at the time 
of its adoption. Any other rule of construction would abrogate the 
judicial character of this Court, and make it the mere retlcx of the 
popular opinion and passion of the day." f 

Surely these extracts show plainly that the phrase in question 
was not uttered as the opinion of the Court, which may be ftiirly 
inferred to be the reverse. For it is given as the opinion of former 
times, which it is now difficult to realize, and on account of wliich 
the race is styled " unfortunate." An Opinion, almost obsolete and 
difficult to be realized, and repudiated in its effects, cannot have been 
given as the Opinion of the Court ; but as the Court itself explains, 
historically, and therefore needing to be taken into the account in 
the interpretation of the Constitution, formed when the Opinion 
prevailed. Indeed, if there is occasion for any outcry against the 
expression of the Court, it is rather for a Southern than a Northern 
outcry, if, as is alleged, the South maintain the old opinion still. 
For, undoubtedly, the Court intimate that the present state of public 
opinion is different, and would require a different interpretation of 
the Constitution if formed at this day ; whilst yet the language of 
seventy years ago must needs be interpreted in view of the senti- 
ments prevailing seventy years ago, and not of any changed senti- 

* P. 407. t P. 426. 



129 

mont prevailing; now, even flioiigli cntfrtainod by tlio Court. I'lio 
judgment of tin.' Court is not declared on what should be the mean- 
ing of the language employed, hut what must have been the mean- 
ing at the date of the instrunieiil itself. 

Having made this just exjilanntion of the obnoxious expression 
of the Court, it must still be admitted that not only the Court but 
the country, not only the South but tlu; North, do allow to the freed 
African something less than full Anglo-Saxon citizenship, with all 
its rights and privileges, as this work has amply asserted and illus- 
trnfed.* Nor is there the slightest evidence in this wide-spread 
outcry to tiie contrary, that either the judgment or the j)assions of 
tlie North would grant to-day the very boon which has been claimed 
so loudly and so widely of the Supreme Judicatory of the land. 
The following suppositions may aid in convincing the excited 
Northern mind that it claims of the Court mon; than itself is will- 
ing to grant, and may prepare the way for those juster views of the 
dilficult pr()l)lem of Africa in America, which the actual case 
requires. 

Let, then, the supposition, which we have made for another pur- 
pose, — viz., to show that it could not be enforced in all its conse- 
quences, — return upon us with this change — that it shall need no 
enforcement — that the decision of the Court, giving full Anglo- 
Saxon rights and privileges to Dred Scott, shall have, free course, 
with «'(pial consent of the North and of the South, and that thou- 
sands and tens of thousands shall receive the l)oon, incn-asing largely 
Hw. number of African fellow-citizens: — 

Let it be suppos<'d further, that the South h:id conceded Kansas 
to freedom, and that the IMissouri Com|)roinise had b(;en unrepealed, 
and the line of '>]('° 30' preserved as the fixed boundary between 
freed(»m and slav(!ry ; and that, in order to provide for the Southern 
free N(;groes, now ra[)idly increasing, there had been established 
Sotithern Kviujranl Aid Socit'ties for the settlement of Free Ner/rocs 
171 Jumsfts, choosing the; most eligible^ portions of that fertile. Terri- 
tory, and giving endowments in lands and equipments to the whole 
friv black population, both North and South, and that under these 
kindly aids there should be an emigration by hundreds and 
thousands : — 

• Sec pp. 21, 22 ; ako, pp. 80, 81, 82. 



ISO 

Let it be supposed further, tLat this African host, ready to flood 
Kaasas, should find Kansas too narrow, too distant, and too diflioult, 
and should spread themselves over the States '• north-west of the 
Ohio." and even over Pennsylvania, New York, and New England, 
as part and parcel of the English race, under the claim decided by 
the Court, of Anglo-Saxon freedom and citizenship, as the gh\ of 
the Constitution: — 

Let these suppositions be made as the only natural suppositions 
in the case, and then let it be asked : — 

WUl these hopeful and joWul emignmts find, af the present day, 
the welcome from their Anglo-Saxon fellow-citizens, which the pres- 
ent outcry in all consistency requires, and which shall make their 
co-cirizenship a blessing? Those fields of hope, opened to them 
by the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, will 
they be found opened to them also, by the hearty good wUl of the 
people of the North, instead of prohibitory laws and penalties, which 
shall send them back to slavery, or make their liberty a curse ? 

Or, if you wiU, rather suppose, in all consistency with the benev- 
olent outcry of the times, that they shall be received with open 
heart and open hand as the moiety of Kansas, and in large propor- 
tions in Ohio, Lidiana, and Illinois, in Pennsylvania, New York, 
and New England, how then stands the question before the common 
sense and sound judgment of the North ? 

Is it the deUberate judgment, the well-settled conclusion of 
Northern philanthropists, nay, of that Northern mass now con- 
demning, by acclamation, the '^ Decision " of the Supreme Court, 
that these Airican immigrants, established in large proportions, as 
co-citizens, with full Anglo-Saxon immunities, will be found in all 
respects fitted for their lot, even in their improved state, as com- 
pared with their African ancestry, — fitted at once to secure their 
own well-being in their new condition, and that of the communities 
whose franchises and opportunities they have come to share ? 

What answer does the actual sentiment of the present day make ? 
What answer do the Northern settlers of Kansas make ? What 
answer comes from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois ? from Pennsylvania, 
New York, and New England ? Can any one mistake it ? Can 
anyone question what would be the outcry, if these suppositions 
were actually imminent ? if the free African blood were even now 
breaking in upon the hopes of the Anglo-Saxon race? — The 



1^ 






X 

large number 
Aeyarr -^ - 
ciTiIix&: 



132 

not the slaves only as slaves, but the free Negroes also as free 
Negroes. 

And if this be the actual opinion, not only of seventy years ago, 
but now ; not only of the slave-holding South, but of the free North 
also, with all its zeal for African freedom ; and above all, if there 
is reason for it, in difference of origin, and race, and civilization, 
such that equal rights and privileges, where the proportion is large, 
would be for the advantage of neither race, what then is the con- 
clusion ? We may deplore the existing opinion, if the opinion be 
false ; we may deplore the facts, if the opinion be just ; we may 
wish that the " unfortunate race " had never been landed on our 
shores, and please ourselves with the vision of America with a 
homogeneous people ; but after our deplorings and our visions, the 
opinions and the facts remain ; and it is just as true that there is 
repulsion at the North, refusing " free soil " to the African, as that 
there is slavery at the South — that " free soil " for the African 
race is not a Northern, as that " slavery" is a Southern institution ; 
and the question returns — What, then, is the conclusion ? 

Is it to deny all rights whatever, not only to the enslaved but to 
the freed African? to deny all the claims of humanity and justice 
to the entire race ? Is it not rather for the North and the South to 
unite in the methods best suited to the actual case — not authorita- 
tively on either hand, but fraternally ; to take the more pains, to 
make the more careful arrangement, and to be the more watchful 
that every immunity due to the actual facts, shall be made sure ; 
that every claim of humanity and justice shall be fulfilled, both to 
bond and free ? 

This, certainly, is the honest and earnest purpose of this work; 
— uniting the North and the South, it aims to give to the slaves 
something better than the freedom so earnestly claimed for them, 
and to the free Negroes something better than they would find at 
the North, if they should come crowding into all the rights and 
privileges of the Anglo-Saxon race, meeting the humanity and 
justice which they would find in Kansas ; in Illinois ; Indiana, and 
Ohio; in Pennsylvania, New York, and New England. In our 
" Suggestions for a Eemedial Code," we have proposed rights to be 
acknowledged for the slaves, and methods for obtaining, securing, 
and recovering those rights. We have suggested also,* " Methods 

* Chap, xiii., sect. 8. 



133 

for the free," certainly with something less than full Anglo-Saxon 
immunities, wherever large proportions are supposable — on those 
reasonable grounds on which none act more decidedlv than the anti- 
slavery North. Whatever be the just immunities for bond or free, 
they are all to be the more carefully provided for, in view of the 
actual disabilities attaching to the race, with all facilities afforded for 
every desirable advancement, and all securities for such immunities 
as may be allowed. 

This admission to certain immunities, and not to aU, required by 
the peculiar characteristics and relations of the two races, is not 
without a parallel and illustration in the history of our forefathers, 
when there was not the superadded difficulty of a population so 
remarkably differing in race. You may require Magna Charta to 
complete itself instantly by giving to the " serfs " all the immunities 
of the barons of England, but. you cannot instantly dispense with 
the '• serfdom," which is the actual arrangement for the necessities 
of the serfs, as well as for the fuller provisions for their lords ; but 
you may secure all the immunities as well as obligations suitable to 
the actual conditions of both. You may require the Bill of Eights 
to give full suffrage to every inhabitant of the British Isles, and 
such confiscations and distributions as shall equalize the condition 
of nobles, commons, peasantry, but you cannot instantly give the 
capabilities and the habits of useful franchise and economical pos- 
session, which shall make these immunities a boon to the unac- 
customed mass. Or, to meet existing evils, you may require 
instantaneous relief and comfort for all the cotton mills and mines 
of England ; to abolish, at a stroke, the whole system of their labor ; 
but you cannot instantly furnish the indispensable substitute for the 
method by which the laborers are provided for. and the mantifac- 
tures of cotton and iron furnished for the wants of millions, tlie 
wide world over. In all these cases you might have done and may 
do more to diminish the evil, and increase the good ; and this is the 
proper field for your benevolent wisdom. 

In like manner, and with more reason, where the population is not 
homo£eneous. and where there is an actual repulsion between the 
more and the less advanced in civilization, by prejudice or with 
reason, you are bound to give such immunities as are suited to the 
case, with the more earnestness and pains, because you cannot give 
all the immunities of Anglo-Saxon citizenship. You may requke, 
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134 

instead, slavery to be instantly abolished, labor to be free over all 
the cotton and sugar fields of the South, but you cannot abolish, 
we do not say the wants of the whole world depending on those 
fields, but you cannot abolish the wants of the slaves provided for 
by the present system of labor, and instantly establish an adequate 
substitute, nor instantly abolish that terrible repulsion, with and 
without reason, which forbids them to earn their bread in the whole 
" free soil " of the North. The cry so common of late, " The world 
must have cotton and sugar," regards but one part of the case. 
The men who now cultivate the cotton and the sugar must have 
bread, — must not find the existing system of labor broken up, 
without some sufficient substitute, — is the other part. " Laborers 
must be imported — the peasantry of Europe, ' Coolies ' from the 
East, that the world may be supplied with cotton and sugar ; " but 
this is but part of the case. On the other hand, the laborers of 
Europe and Asia must not be brought in to supply every body else 
with cotton and sugar, to the lack of the very means of life, of 
bread itself, to the Africans now laboring the soil for themselves, 
more absolutely than for the whole world beside. The labor so 
eagerly sought for, to supply the lack where slavery has been abol- 
ished, and where it is proposed to abolish it, how much better is it 
provided for by the methods of this work, — not by discharging the 
laborers who now have their claim on capital and land, but by re- 
taining them, with whatever bad bonds loosed, with whatever good 
bonds added or retained. " Cotton is king." Be it so, and let 
cotton reign for the benefit of the wide world, neither by perpetuating 
abuses and wrong, nor by displacing African by European and 
Asiatic labor, and driving it from the South upon the unwilling and 
repelling North, but under the Magna Charta of African well- 
being. 

It is the aim of this work to promote such legislation and such 
judicial privileges for this present time, and for an indefinite future, 
as are fitted to the actual condition of the African race, whether 
bond or free ; aiming so high in regard to slavery, that it might be 
called a regulated freedom, and yet so retaining all advantageous 
restraints, that it should still be an ameliorated slavery ; something 
"better than freedom " for the slave, " something better than slavery 
as it is," for the master, with all desirable facilities for individual 
freedom ; and for the freed such immunities and privileges as shall 



135 

be for the actual benefit of both races, with all encouragement and 
aid for the fullest enfranchisement in " America in Africa," now 
opening her arms to receive them. 

In truth, there is but one practicable way, and there can be no 
other, in the mysterious relations of the two races in our land, — the 
method of retaining good bonds only, and of loosing only the bad, — 
the method of well-being. The suggestions made in this work may 
require variation, the details may be improved by knowledge and 
experience ; but the principles and the substantial method are as 
certain as truth, and sooner or later must prevail, if Africa in Amer- 
ica, or America in Africa, are to share the blessings of the Christian 
•world. Amidst all the denunciations of existing facts, the strifes of 
Christian philanthropy, the divisions which have resulted from sec- 
tional contention, and the sectional contentions threatening still fur- 
ther divisions into churches North and churches South, benevolent 
societies North and benevolent societies South, what other method 
is practicable ? Nay, amidst these earnest debates, as aimless as 
earnest, what clear and distinct proposal is made? What other 
daylight dawns ujDon the night of our perplexity ? Who will tell us, 
not of any thing better, but of any thing else that can be done, not 
only with but /or the mass, the millions in our land ? 

Shall they be set free, with full liberty to flood the North ? Alas ! it 
is one thing to denounce slavery, and another thing to receive the 
freed slaves with mutual advantage ; one thing to keep up an outcry 
against the " peculiar institution " of the South, and another to ac- 
cept multitudes of African freemen as the new " institution " of the 
North. It is one thing to pass a few fugitive slaves through and 
beyond your State on the " Underground Railroad," and another 
thing to receive crowding multitudes to your houses and lands, to 
share favorably or not, for them as well as yourselves, all the oppor- 
tunities of enterprise and livelihood with your families, if it be not 
rather to live upon your scanty charities, or be absolutely repelled 
by your electi-ical touch. 

Or shall they be set free and kept South ? — free, and yet not 
free — emancipated into bondage — obliged to stay under disadvan- 
tages which they feel, and forbidden to go to the advantages which 
seem to them so great ; with no claim upon capital where they are, 
and no liberty to seek employment among the friends of whom they 
have heard so much ? And shall Southern capital be compelled to 



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137 

dve in the hi^est degree ; to be as sure aa die crarha of Omsdaa 
good will and the certaintiea of Providence above the devices and 
powers of men. They may be questioned, refused- denounced, but 
are sure to prevail whether by wise anticipation or bitter and pro- 
longed experience. Dream what we may. devise, attempt what we 
may. question, refuse, denounce what we may. There is this way. and 
'here is no other. 

Aa to the difficulty, whether oi engaging the South in the work 
of amelioration, or uniting the North in the only position for feater- 
nal aids, — the latter, it may be. greater than the former. — we 
return to the assurance of our Preiace of 1356 — The THrssa 

WHICH ABE nrP05aiBI.E WITH 'HAJS ABE PO-jaXBLE WTTH GrOD. 

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